Career Talk; Specialisation in Mass Communication

As a Mass Communication student, you might sometimes want to ask yourself some mind bugging questions after bagging (no pun intended) your certificate on prospective career opportunities you can fit in to or the one that pays you, probably questions like; am I going to be a news reporter? Is it the only job up for grasp after studying the whole years? This article is going to enlighten you about other fields a mass communication graduate can venture into with your certificate;

1. Journalism
2. broadcasting
3. public relations
4. advertising
5. book publishing

Journalism as a field is the practice or an art of disseminating information to a large, heterogeneous group of people through mass media vehicles. These vehicles include; radio, television, news paper and the internet. The print media is the most common in journalism practice beside it is the traditional form of spreading information and just like other professions journalism has its own field i.e. being a journalist you can be in either of these three fields ; Photojournalism, Editing, and Documentary the first newspaper in Nigeria is Iwe Iroyin 1859 by Rev. Henry Townsend and the first English Newspaper is called “Daily Courant” established in 1702 and wound-up in 1775.

Broadcasting is another area of specialization for a graduate of mass communication; it involves the spreading of information (visual and audio) from transmitters to a receiving device i.e. radio and television sets, this means you can become a Television Presenter, a radio presenter, On-Air-Presenter (OAP), A newscaster, sound engineer and others.

Individuals and organizations use Public Relations for information management, meanwhile Public Relations stretches beyond information management alone; it entails proper image making through publicity, maintaining mutual understanding between an organization and its publics and public opinion management. Public relations practitioners are called; “ Public Relations Officer(PRO)”,” publicity managers”,” Publicity Secretary” depending on the organization.

Edward Barnays can be said to be the father of modern Advertising after he established Madison Avenue in the 1920s, advertising involves making known a product or service as it involves marketing and also the persuasion of target audiences to patronize a product. However Advertising can either be commercial( goods and services) or non-commercial which is usually done by non-profit organizations like Political parties and NGOs  through free modes like Public Service Announcement(PSA) and word-of-mouth, everybody should be familiar with this system e.g. Molue adverts commonly used by Preachers and Drug peddlers in Lagos or chants by hawkers on the street.

The advent of the internet has shaped the way Publishing is being practiced; according to Wikipedia Publishing can be defined as;” the production and dissemination of music, literature and information to a large group of people” the most common form of publishing is Book and Novel publishing,  there are three forms of publishing it include; non-paid publishing, semi-paid and paid publishing, you decide the form you want.

 Written by; Bello Muhammed Nauteeq (DWA)