Language and Literature Educators for Fostering Media Literacy in the Nigerian Society

Our society exists in media-saturated environment that cut across print, broadcast, digital and even online platforms, with their various missions and messages. Majority of these media outlets disseminate contents that are not in tandem with our culture, norms, values and acceptable ways of life, thereby exposing our children, adolescents and young adults unnecessarily to unacceptable messages. This necessitates the study of media and media literacy education as avenue to checkmate this rapidly evolving situation. Media literacy connote a set of skills and competencies for accessing, analysing, evaluating, creating, interpreting and understanding the complex messages that are communicated via various media outlets. It occupies a significant portion of the curriculum content of schools in the USA, UK, Australia and Canada, but is lacking in Nigeria. Thus, media studies is not yet a subject in Nigeria, and because use and communication in English depend on content of published media resources, both print and digital, there is therefore the feasibility of teachers and educators in language and literature to project media literacy instructions in the country. These are examined in the paper, with analysis of media literacy and the way forward for Nigeria.