Mr. Remmy Nweke, Lead Strategist and Group Executive Editor at DigitalSENSE Africa Media has urged Nigerian media practitioners to be patriotic about the country’s code Top Level Domain (ccTLD),.

Speaking at the 2019 Media College on .NG on his paper entitled “Media as catalyst for change in Domain Name System (DNS) industry,” Mr. Nweke, enjoined Nigerian media practitioners to own this country resource beginning with their becoming individual registrants on .NG string likeITREALMS.com.ng.

He told participants at the 2019 “Media College on .NG” organized by the Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA) on the overarching theme of ‘The Role of Media in DNS Industry’ that by the fact of becoming a registrant, an end-user, media practitioners are drawing nearing to understanding the modus operandi of NIRA as the registry for dotNG.

Nweke, a former Executive Director at NIRA, pointed out that by associating with the dotNG brand by media practitioners should be reciprocal with requisite industry supports like instituting a direct reward for the media foot-soldiers such as reporters and editors alike, especially for those playing active positive roles in sustaining the Nigeria’s DNS industry, as those media entities needs to be sustained too.

Also, Nweke, who doubles as the Editor-in-chief of multiple award-winning ITREALMS, advised that media practitioners could leverage the resellership of domain names to empower themselves knowledge-wise on DNS industry, whilst adding up a new income stream, as well as offering online writing and editing services, webdesign, Voice Over services to name a few.

By developing new online products, he said, media practitioners should ensure they build strong media brands on the internet and consistent with their dreams, so as to be seen as adding value by making money.

With this notion, he said, DNS industry in Nigeria will thrive for the benefit of all Nigerians including media professionals.

Drawing attention to the importance of new media, Nweke said, it’s a form of media that are native to computers, computational and relying heavily on computers for redistribution, stressing that new media nowadays comprises telephones, computers, virtual worlds, single media, website games, human-computer interface, computer animation and interactive computer installations.

He defined DNS as the Internet’s system for converting alphabetic names into numeric Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, citing for instance that a web address’ Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is typed into a browser, DNS servers return the IP address of the web server associated with that name, within nanoseconds.

Further, Nweke, who is a multiple award winning author and techmediapreneur, said that as a catalyst, Nigerian media should reawake their watchdog role with focus on the DNS industry, so as to precipitate the needed change by making certain that .NG receive the attention it deserves thereby making the difference a change agent.

Describing well-trained media professionals as the original social influencers, who have contributed immensely in every burgeoning society and advised them not to let that role be swept away by fades in the name of ‘social media influencers.’

This, he said, they can do by enmeshing themselves with the knowledge of the new media, through avalanche of open sourced education opportunities like Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) among others.

In addition, he called for closer collaboration between NIRA and likes of Nigeria Information Technology Reporters Association (NITRA) and Guild of Corporate of Online Publishers (GOCOP), to name a few.

Emphasizing that NiRA is the registry for .NG Domain Names and maintains the database of names registered in the .ng country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD), just as NIRA is a Not-for-Profit, Non-Governmental Self-Regulating body and managers the .ng national resource, in the public interest of Nigeria and global internet community.