Abstract

Social media platforms such as facebook and whatsapp are increasingly been awashed with obscene reports in words, photographs and videos. The thrust of this paper is to find out the reasons for reporting obscenity as mobile citizen journalists do and to suggest possible ways of taming the trend of unethical reportorial behaviour. Mobile Citizen Journalists are members of the general public who use digital camera, camcorders, laptops, smartphones and tablet devices to gather, edit and report news to respective mobile platforms. Obscenity in this context is the outrageous, offensive and indecent depiction of words or offensive images victims of violence, murder or kidnapping or of core sex or sex related details through the channels of communication. This study adopts a qualitative approach and uses a Focus Group Discussion of ten students drawn from various departments in the Faculty of Arts and structured interviews with randomly selected seven (7) Professors and Associate Professors in media related fields. Research questions revolved around reasons for reporting obscenely and possible ways for taming the behaviour. This paper assumes that the practices of these journalists, especially in reporting obscenity, is a time bomb waiting to explode the integrity of journalistic practice in Nigeria if not checked. The study recommends censorship, sensitization of the public by the Nigerian Union of Journalists, and the cultivation of ethical behaviour by citizen journalists as a machinery to tame the reportorial behaviour of Nigerian Mobile Journalists.