9Mobile news SMS entrepreneurship and citizen journalism potentials in Nigeria

Abstract

There is increased mobile telecommunications penetration across Nigeria. One of the realities connected to such penetration is the news-text services offered by the country’s 9Mobile mobile telecommunications company. This content analysis and covert non-participant observation research examined news entrepreneurial and citizen journalism potentials of the service. Findings show that news SMS service is encouraging, but issues such as delayed delivery and incomplete replications concurrently hamper entrepreneurial and citizen journalism benefits. The degree of diversity of 9Mobile news SMS contents is also poor. Nevertheless, there was significant use of prominent news stories – as derived from the hardcopies of the sourcing national newspapers. The research notes the need for news SMS copyright and plagiarism checks alongside other professional standards. Overall, it is pertinent to reiterate that irrespective of shortcomings, convergent news deliveries of 9Mobile SMS-MoreNews retain significant potentials for entrepreneurship and citizen journalism.