ABSTRACT
The recent directive by the Nigerian Universities Commission on the unbundling of mass communication into areas of specialities has raised scholarly discourse on the effectiveness of the split in communication studies. Hitherto, everything communication-related has been called ‘mass communication.’ However, the emergence of new and social media changes the calculus of communication studies and education in Nigeria and thus questions if our current communication as a nation is truly ‘mass.’ This informs the arguments of many scholars and experts within the field that the implementation of the communication unbundling agenda supports a holistic approach to communication education and that the move to core specialities is in tandem with current global best practices. One of the emerging fields of communication is health communication, which is domiciled in development communication. This chapter examines health communication vis-à-vis its development and applications in communication studies. To this end, the study adopts a content analysis of the current Academic Students’ Handbook of select universities in Nigeria to find out the extent of implementation of health communication in the present curriculum. The study also used in-depth interviews of some development communication experts in the area of health communication to track the various stages and trajectories that have defined the emergence, development and sustenance of health communication as a critical area of communication studies in Nigeria.
