ABSTRACT
Social media are fast becoming very popular means of both
interpersonal and public communication in Nigeria and the world at large.
Social media are modern interactive communication channels through which people
connect to one another, share ideas, experiences, pictures, messages and
information of common interest. What distinguishes the social media from the conventional
means of communication is their interactive nature which allows the audience to
participate in it from any part of the world they reside. McQuail (2010)
differentiates the social media from the traditional mass media when he noted
that “traditional mass communication was essentially one-directional, while the
new forms of communication are essentially interactive.” This interactive aura
of the new media confers an unprecedented popularity on them. The social media
by their nature have the capabilities of educating, informing, entertaining and
„inflaming‟ the audience. Above all, they possess a „contagious and outreaching
influence‟ which the conventional media lack. This potential is most likely
what Osahenye (2012) refers to as “unstoppable power of the social media.” As a
novel phenomenon, it is necessary to examine how Nigerian students use the new
means of communication. This is because it is observed that students’
contribution as youths can make or mar any nation.
CHAPTER
ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1
Background
to the Study
Social media
are fast becoming very popular means of both interpersonal and public
communication in Nigeria and the world at large. Social media are modern
interactive communication channels through which people connect to one another,
share ideas, experiences, pictures, messages and information of common
interest. What distinguishes the social media from the conventional means of
communication is their interactive nature which allows the audience to
participate in it from any part of the world they reside. McQuail (2010)
differentiates the social media from the traditional mass media when he noted
that “traditional mass communication was essentially one-directional, while the
new forms of communication are essentially interactive.” This interactive aura
of the new media confers an unprecedented popularity on them. The social media
by their nature have the capabilities of educating, informing, entertaining and
„inflaming‟ the audience. Above all, they possess a „contagious and outreaching
influence‟ which the conventional media lack. This potential is most likely
what Osahenye (2012) refers to as “unstoppable power of the social media.” As a
novel phenomenon, it is necessary to examine how Nigerian students use the new
means of communication. This is because it is observed that students’
contribution as youths can make or mar any nation.
Okolloh cited
by Essoungou (2010), explains that, “the new communication technology is one of
the few ways that young Africans can bypass the inefficiencies in the system
that allow the status quo to hold on. It lowers the barriers to entry for
everyone to get involved and be heard.” A study like this shall help to
ascertain whether students‟ use of the social media could be regulated or not.
This is obviously because the disposition of people of a given community could
shape the media in existence there, just like a cerebral media scholar Anim
(2007) aptly notes that “…societies greatly influence the operations and
functions of the media that operate within those societies.” The manner in
which the social media were used and the role they played in the recent
uprising which rocked the Middle-East popularly referred to as „Arab Spring‟
could be deciphered as credence to the above academics‟ observation. Now just
like radio or television stations, social media sites spread everywhere in
Nigeria and are bound to be sprouting as technologies continue to improve;
however, the problem lies in the point that the purposes which the users apply
the new media for are still obscure. This is what Folorunso, Vincent, Adekoya
and Adewale (2010), perceived when they argue generally that, “in Africa,
social media networking site is becoming widely spread than it has ever been
before and it tends to be majorly accepted by the youths. Yet the widespread
adoption by users of these sites is not clear, as it appears that people‟s perception
of this technology is diverse.”
Social media tools are rapidly changing the communications
landscape. Their emergence has impacted significantly how students learn and
the way instructors teach. In today higher education settings, instructors,
students, and others collaborate on the tasks of knowledge construction.The
influence of social media on learning and teaching environments is growing more
each year.
Social media applications can reinforce class material and
positively influence discussions, collaborative work, and authoring. Educators
and researchers are constantly experimenting with social media technologies
hoping to stimulate critical thinking skills, collaboration and knowledge
construction. Social media technologies offer the capability to both receive
and create content with the hope that a collective intelligence emerges. The
goal is to improve students’ learning experiences to prepare them to enter a
workforce that is not geographically constrained and expects them to have highly
developed online collaboration skills. The pursuit of such benefits drives
academics to incorporate new technological approaches in their teaching
methodology.
Most
learning is a social activity which occurs in interaction with others, so it is
quite a logical step to integrate social media into learning experiences (Sie
et al., 2012). The more social the medium is, the greater the impact
communication partners have on each other’s behavior (Kaplan & Haenlein
2010). Social media encourage, support and enable people to easily and
effectively share knowledge through different technologies.
Social media can be defined as “collaborative online
applications and technologies which enable and encourage participation,
conversation, openness, creation and socialization amongst a community of
users”. Also, social networking refers to a process of relationship building
among a group with a common interest. Social media emerged in Nigeria
principally for the purpose of socializing (Bowley, 2007).
A wide variety of characteristics and capabilities have
been defined for social media in the literature. However, for the purpose of
this study, those features of social media have been considered relevant to
knowledge sharing purposes. They have the capabilities of social media that
encourage, support, and enable undergraduate students to share their knowledge
easily and effectively through different mechanisms. These characteristics of
social media can be categorized into four features: Social connections have
become very important and have improved and enhance accessibility of
information and sharing of knowledge tremendously among Nigerian Universities.
Social Media are media that allow
users to meet online via the Internet, communicate in social forum like
Facebook, Twitter, etc., and other chat sites, where users generally socialise
by sharing news, photo or ideas and thoughts, or respond to issues and other
contents with other people. Common examples of social media are the popular
social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace, Youtube, Flicker,
etc. Social Media is an interactive media format that allows users to interact
with each other as well as send and receive content from and to each other
generally by means of the Internet.
Social media are technologies that facilitate
social interaction, make possible collaboration, and enable deliberation by
stakeholders across boundaries, time and space. These technologies include:
blogs, wikis, media (audio, photo, video, text) sharing tools, networking
platforms (including Facebook), and virtual worlds (Bryer and Zavatarro, 2011).
The rise of social media sites as another platform on the internet has gained
popularity over the last decade. The sites have attracted millions of users
worldwide (Boyd, & Ellison, 2007) due to this fact many people are changing
the outlet where they search for news, information, business and entertainment.
These social media sites let those who use them create personal profiles, while
connecting with other users of the sites. Users can upload photographs and post
what they are doing at any given time.
The social media by their nature have
the capabilities of educating, informing, entertaining and inflaming the
audience. Above all, they possess a contagious and outreaching influence which
the conventional media lack. This potential is most likely what Osahenye (2012)
refers to as “unstoppable power of the social media.Abubakar, (2011), posits
that social media, which include blogs (political Blog), networks (Facebook,
Twitter, etc.), video sharing (YouTube) audio sharing (Podcast), mobile sites
(2go etc.), image or picture sharing (flicker), etc. have the capacity of
boosting participation because of their open, conversational nature,
connectedness and textual and audio-visual characteristic appeals.
In a study conducted on Social media
usage among Youths in Nigeria,Ajewole,Olowu, and Fasola, (2012), concluded that
majority of the respondents spend more time on social networking sites,
whichaffects their productivity negatively. The findings of this study also
indicate that youths in Nigeria are spending too much time on social media at
the detriment of other necessary things such as their studies.
A
study conducted in 2013 to find out students’ use of social media revealed that
student view social media for the purposes of self-development, leisurely
entertainment, to watch films, to expose themselves to phonography discuss
serious national issues like politics, economy, and religious matters on the
new media (Ezeah, Euphemia, Asogwa and Obiorah, 2013).
Nigeria, a
country with population of 167 million people (census 2006), 115 million mobile
telephone subscribers and million internet users, has been described as the
biggest internet and mobile market (NCC 2013). Today in Nigeria there are over
1000 social media sites, which include social, educational, entertainment and
gossip, etc. One common feature of most of these sites is that their names are
usually associated with a tag name Naijaor Nigeria.
The
mass appeal of social media on the internet could be a cause for concern,
particularly considering the gradually increasing amount of time youths spend
online. In Nigeria, undergraduates spend more time on Facebook, Twitter and
other social media sites through smartphones that are now in abundance among
them and most of them cannot go for two-three hours without checking and
updating their profiles on these social media even at the detriment of other
activities such as educational and career pursuit. (Idankwo,2011). The numerous
problems of social media usage have recently been the major focus of attention
worldwide. Issues of fraud, identity thefts, pornography and countless other
negative influences associated with social media in general have been a cause
of concern for scholars and authorities worldwide. There are increasing
concerns on the use of social media for Internet crimes ranging from hacking to
recruitment for terrorism.
The convergence of information and
communication technologies as typified by the Internet is increasingly having
more influence on all aspects of the society as it has become an integral part
of the daily lives of many people. It has had a transformative impact on the
mode of information sharing and access globally. Information and knowledge
disseminated through the slow process of oral communications or with paper
materials can now be transferred rapidly from an individual to an infinite
number of users through a number of media and formats. The Internet is the
fastest growing communication technology and has emerged as a major source of
information that connects people, data and other computers, reducing the world
to the much talked-about global village.
Amichai-Hamburger and Hayat (2010) described the Internet as the
creation of a continuous stream of computers linked together to form one grid,
which enables interaction among hundreds of millions of people browsing the
net.
Whereas the television revolution
reached 50 million viewers in 13 years, the same feat was attained in only four
years by the Internet (Molosi, 2001). Aqil and Ahmad (2011) averred that the
Internet places information on our finger tips and that it is everywhere,
knocking at our door, making our life easy and smooth in enhancing self
development and promoting learning among students.
The education sector was among those
that first embraced the use of Internet, and it has continued to broaden the
breadth and depth of opportunities within institutions of higher learning
worldwide. The Internet serves as a useful tool in support of the various
educational activities that ranged from research to teaching. The Internet
technology and computers has made it possible for students to be active
learners and allowed instructors to be facilitators. Jackson, et al. (2011)
remarked that the Internet will level the educational playing field due to its
availability to everyone, everywhere, and any time, irrespective of gender,
race/ethnicity, income or other socio-demographic characteristics. Thus, the
Internet is a vital tool that will propel University education to greater
heights as the world move further into the knowledge-based economy.
Universities worldwide now invest a
lot on internet access because it reduces the time between the production and
utilization of knowledge; improves co-operation and exchange of ideas with
fellow researchers in other institutions, regions or countries, furthers the
sharing of information; and promotes multidisciplinary research. Today,
survival in academics without the Internet is hardly imaginable. The Internet
has found useful applications in online data repositories, library catalogues,
journals, news services, student and financial administration systems, online
supported or solely online conducted teaching, as well as in digital
communication with fellow students and lecturers. Other contemporary uses of
Internet by students include purchasing, entertainment, and even dating. The
investigation of how the Internet fits into the daily life of staff and
students at educational institutions is worthwhile when one considers the ubiquitous
and all pervasive communications tool features of the Internet. Consequently,
studies have been carried out in many places to understand how University
students use the Internet, the purposes for which the students use the
Internet, the search engines used, their Internet skills as well as problems
that hinder efficient Internet use.
The Internet is very useful to
university students and staff in Nigeria because it enables them to have access
to timely, accurate and relevant information that cannot be obtained from
library shelves. Internet searching helps university students to boost their
intellectual development and job preparation. Due to the endless nature of
information resources on the Internet, libraries are increasingly investing in
provision of Internet services and resources to enable their clients have
better access to the information. The Internet connections also constitute a
highly visible service in every library and the librarians and their clients
have embraced it in their daily work. Academic libraries now run information
literacy courses to educate faculty members and students on skills to access,
retrieve and evaluate information resources from the Internet.
The single
most significant technological development in the last 20 years has been the
Internet. The Internet makes it possible for individuals to connect,
collaborate and share knowledge, information, document, photo, video, etc.
continuously with anyone in the world. Furthermore, people are able to make use
of social media tools in order to increase range and richness of their
networks, gather information and nowadays, increasingly organizations are
finding ways of integrating social media into their business processes (Gaál et
al, 2014). It is the light of the above that this research work will seek to
the use of social media by Part-time students in Ambrose Alli University
Ekpoma.
1.2
Statement of the Problem
Social
media has influenced the educational system in Nigeria universities. Its
introduction has played a significant role for self development,
administration, teaching and learning in both collegies and universities.
However, from research dimension, many researchers have tried to write about
one aspect or another on the subject of use of social media by students in Nigeria
but not much has been carried out in the area of the extent of using social
media by part-time students for self development in Ambrose Alli University
Ekpoma Edo State.
Also, several studies has dealt on the impact of the use of
social media by undergraduate students and its influence on their academic
performance, and the use of social media by part-time students have not been
employed. Hence this study was designed to investigate the extent of using
social media by part-time students for self development in Ambrose Alli
University Ekpoma Edo State.
1.3
Objectives of the Study
The general Objective of the study is
to examine the extent of using social media by part-time students for self
development in Ambrose Alli University Ekpoma Edo State. The specific
objectives of the study are to:
1. Examine the
use of social media by part-time students in Ambrose Alli University.
2. Examine the
extent of usage of social media by part-time students in Ambrose Alli
University.
3. Examine the
purpose of the usage of social media by part-time students in Ambrose Alli
University.
4. Determine
benefits of using social media by part-time students in Ambrose Alli
University.
5. Challenges
facing the use of social media site
by part-time students in Ambrose Alli University.
1.4
Research Questions
The following
research questions are formulated to guide the study.
1. Are social
media used by part-time students in Ambrose Alli University?
2. To what
extent is social media used by part-time students in Ambrose Alli University?
3. What are the
purposes of the usage of social media by part-time students in Ambrose Alli
University?
4. What are the
benefits of using social media by part-time students in Ambrose Alli
University?
5. What are the
challenges facing the use of social media by part-time students in Ambrose Alli
University?
1.5
Scope of the Study
This research
work centered on the extent of using social media by
part-time students for self development in Ambrose Alli University Ekpoma Edo
State.
1.6
Significance of the Study
The study will be of great significant
to students. It is expected that the output of this research will benefit
students in Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma Edo State specially the part-time
students under study. It will help to determine the level of the students’
usage of social media. This help to enlighten the students of using social
media and as well as the precaution necessary to take in the, use of social
media site. The outcome of this study will also help the lecturers and
university how best to sustain the students’ attention on using social media
and the immense benefit on the use of social media. Also this work will be of
immense benefit to the field of Library and information sciences as it will be
on addition to existing literature.
Also the findings could be used by
academic advisers and counselors to proffer professional advice to the
university authorities on how to regulate the social media usage among
part-time students of Ambrose Alli University Ekpoma.
Again, the
findings of this study would provide facts that will enable the ministry of
communication technology to know what arises from students’ use of the social
media.
This will help
the ministry, to know how to control social media usage. Upon successful completion
of this research, it shall be very relevant to various people, across Nigeria.
1.7 Operational Definition of Terms
The following operational definition
of terms will be used in this study:
Social media
are computer-mediated
tools that allow people to create, share or exchange information, ideas, and
pictures/videos in virtual
communities and networks.
Social media is defined as
"a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and
technological foundations of Web2.0
and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content.
Social
Networking: Social Networking is described social
networking websites as systems that allow individuals to: (1) construct a
public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of
other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their
list of connections and those made by others within the system.
Tertiary:
This
refers to as the third stage, third level and post- secondary education in the
higher learning.
Institution:
An
institution is defined as a process of facilitating learning or the acquisition
of knowledge, skills, values, belief and habits.
Students:
According
to Merriam Webster dictionary, a student is a person who attends a school,
college or university.
Part-Time:
According
to oxford advanced learner dictionary 8th edition define part-time
as part of day or week in which people work or study.
Self Development: Is defined as the
process of taking steps to better yourself, such as by learning new skills or
overcoming bad habit. It also a process whrerby a person character or ability
are gradually developed.================================================================
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