Digital Media, Information Fragmentation, and the Transformation of Reading Practices in Nigerian Higher Education

Abstract

The expansion of digital media infrastructures has reconfigured patterns of information access, attention allocation, and knowledge consumption within higher education globally. In Nigerian universities, growing concern about declining sustained reading and shallow engagement with academic texts has often been framed in moral or generational terms. However, limited scholarship has examined how digital media environments structurally reshape reading practices within specific socio-educational contexts. This study investigates how digital media exposure and information fragmentation influence undergraduate reading practices in Nigerian higher education.
Adopting a mixed-methods design, the study draws on survey data (N = 512) collected across federal, state and private universities, complemented by focus group discussions. Quantitative analysis examined relationships between digital media use, multitasking behaviors, sustained reading duration and academic engagement, while qualitative analysis explored students lived experiences of reading within digitally saturated environments. The study is theoretically anchored in media ecology, attention economy theory, and an information fragmentation framework.
Findings indicate a statistically significant negative association between high-intensity social media use and sustained academic reading duration. Reading practices increasingly reflect fragmented, screen-dominant engagement characterized by multitasking, modular information extraction, and reliance on summaries and audiovisual explainers. However, the evidence does not support a narrative of reading disappearance. Instead, students exhibit hybrid literacy practices integrating digital tools with traditional academic texts.
The study concludes that transformations in reading culture are structurally conditioned by mediatized attention environments rather than reducible to individual indiscipline. By situating reading practices within broader digital infrastructures, the research contributes to communication scholarship on cognitive transformation in higher education and highlights the implications of attention-fragmented environments for academic literacy.