The new internet and digital technologies have truly accelerated and improved media functions and operations in modern society. Like the developed nations, sub-Saharan African countries have benefitted immensely in adopting new media tools to generate, access, disseminate, store, and retrieve information. Since the basic function of the media is to inform the public, digital tools and various internet platforms have exemplified this role by increasing the volume and spread of news information in today's network society. In fact, the current information era is one characterized by the inundated volume of data and flood of information. However, with such incredible overload of information, new problems have emerged; the anonymous nature of most of these internet platforms have permitted highly adulterated and unethical news contents to contaminate the digital space. Sadly, many credible news information compete or get mixed with the whirlpool of disinformation and news pollutants.
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One of the fundamental traditional functions of the mass media is to inform and educate the public. This responsibility predominates every other functions, and or are rather subsumed other this primary goal. The mass media performs this role by disseminating and distributing news and reporting other issues that may help individuals make sense of what is going on around them. The society makes use of media messages and rely heavily on the information and reports to understand the events happening around them and to make informed decisions based on media influence.
In view of this lofty function, the media set agenda, offers authentic and timely facts and opinions about various events and occurrences to their various audience as objective and balanced as possible, in order to remove biases and prejudice from such reports. News and currents affairs are the products of media analysis and reportage. Media is considered as the “mirror” of modern society; as a matter of fact, the media shapes our lives.
In today’s society, media plays a vital role as the purveyor of information. This function is exemplified by dedicating the various channels, from television, radio, newspapers and new media platforms as viable sources where people can get diverse streams of information on daily basis. Therefore, the media possess the exclusive power to select issues and events in the world we know about; they decide what constitute news, they filter and frame issues, they contextualize the problem, they set the agenda, and create (Paul and Rai, 2021).
As a corollary to the sentiment expressed above, the media performs the agenda setting function, which means that the media through such efforts possesses the ability to reorder the world. In effect, the popular aphorism “who plays the piper, dictates the tune” comes to fruition. The media is thus seen as altering the thinking of the members of the society by what they publish and report. Agenda setting therefore explains the ability of the media to influence public awareness of issues as opposed to any predetermined knowledge they might have held previously (Orewere 2006). That is, the media usually salient issues that will stir people’s feelings and emotions. They present different realities to the members of the public in various channels and get people to think about them in the way they have been presented (Yaroson and Asemah in Asemah, 2011).
The information role of the media has also assigned a unique responsibility to the media which is the “gatekeeping” role. This function has directly vested the media with the role of determining what should be made known to the public and what should not. In effect, the media is then seen as being in control of messages and information that are circulated in the society. They determine access to news and information (Asemah, 2011).
On the basis of this, the media interprets information presented about any event or occurrence in order to influence people’s attitude, feeling and opinions regarding the story. This explains the position of Dominik (2008), that the mass media do not only present facts and information, they also provide additional details by interpreting significant events so that people will make meaning on the consequences of the event.
Recently, new technologies have ushered in the proliferation and prevalence of social media in almost every facet of human lives, and these have made the consumption of news and information extremely convenient to the users of such technology. The ease with which information, alerts, and warnings can be broadcast to millions of people in a very short amount of time, has made social media a brilliant platform for information diffusion, especially for time-sensitive situations, and important events that maybe be occurring in great distances. The popularity of online news consumption has grown due to the fact that a considerable number of individuals across the world use social media as a source of news (Shearer and Matsa, 2018; Nami Sumida and Mitchell, 2019),