A two day workshop on Media audience research has ended in Abuja with a call for the reinforcement of the capacity of media organizations, for enhanced democratic governance in Nigeria.
According to the Executive Director of the Institute for Media and Society, Dr Akin Akingbulu, the workshop with practitioners drawn from fifteen media organizations across the country would enhance their skills and strengthened their capacity to diversify and deepen civic and voter education so as to improve engagement in promoting women, youth and the marginalized groups in politics.
Dr Akingbulu also noted that the Institute has the responsibility of implementing the European Union support to media component by increasing the capacity of media organizations to inform and educate the citizenry to participate in the electoral processes.
In a lecture on the “Nature of the media audience research”, a resource person, Professor Victor Ayedun-Aluma, who is the Head of Department of Mass Communication, University of Jos, said that media audience research will not only promote a more scientific understanding and practice of audience research but will make media managers literate as regards elections.
Also in his lecture on “Planning and conducting audience research, with focus on quantitative survey”, another resource person, Dr Bell Ihua stressed that the main focus of audience research is to help media organizations estimate the size of their audience and to discover their preferences.
In a closing remark, the Programme Manager of the Institute ,Mr Sunday Dada urged the participants to utilize the skills in serving their audience better to enhance good governance.
