Draft: The use of media to redirect the youth’s mind to become

favorably disposed to education as against entertainment.

The media undeniably has a great impact in making a topic or a situation

treading, and making an issue seem more important than other issues.
It seems as if the media has over prioritized entertainment more than
education, and has made entertainment oriented programs seem more
important than educational ones. The media seems to over hype
Entertaining programs more. Let’s take for example, the ongoing Big
Brother Naija reality show going on currently. The media has created
such a huge buzz around it that it has made it one of the trending topics
in the mouth and eyes of youths around, due to the way the program has
been advertised continuously prior to the day of running, and how it
paints the show to be promising and mind blowing. The media has over
prioritized such shows and set it be in the front burner of the minds of
youths, thereby distracting them from anything else, such as educational
programs. The major tool the media uses to achieve this is the constant
advertisement of this programs. This paints the program to be so
important.
This cannot be said for educational programs. There seems to be a
decline in educational programs being advertised with such vigour and
importance surrounding it. This basically waters down the importance,
and impact of educational programs in the mind of our youths today.
This influences students to focus more on entertainment programs and
think more on it, than education.

Also, such entertainment programs have so much popular sponsors as

against educational programs. Take BBN for example. They have so
much sponsors like Bet9ja, Kellogs, Munch it, Pepsi, just to mention a
few. Most educational programs hardly find sponsors or find means of
how to get high ratings. This is because the media has swayed the minds
of the youths (which is basically the bulk of the population in Nigeria) to
focus on entertaining programs as against educational ones. Companies,
organizations and businesses know this, and that is why they do not
hesitate to sponsor such programs like BBN because they know it will
get popular, the ratings will increase because majority of the youths
watch it, and because their products will be featured in the program,
their consumer fan base will increase, which will lead to more demand
for their products, and more sales and profit for them.

Entertainment programs seem to be more favored by the people, because

of how the media has rates it and makes it look so important and needed.
The media talks so much about it, that it becomes a trending topic. It is
constantly shoved in the faces of people, which leads to them wanting to
find out what makes such programs interesting. It makes the viewers
curious as to why such program is constantly advertised, which makes
them want to know more about the program, which makes them watch it
and get hooked on it. If the media did the same with educational
programs, and “hyped” educational programs with the same enthusiasm
it did with entertainment programs or more, people will have that same
energetic drive for education too.

Media: Television, Radio, Newspaper, Social media.

Youths: Age ranging from the ages of seventeen (17) to thirty-five (35)
Entertainment programs: Big Brother Nigeria
Educational program
Theory needed: Agenda Setting Theory- propounded by Max McCombs
and Donald Shaw.