CHAPTER
ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
A century and half ago, communication between
countries involved physical presence. Once, a reporter had to run as fast as
possible back to the newsroom after interviewing and tried to beat the
competition to print. With the advent of the digital age the role of the
journalist changed.
The inception of information communication
technology such as the internet has made it possible to find out about events
without actually being there. Journalists can report news across the world over
the internet.
Throughout history, developments in technology and
communication have gone hand-in-hand, and the latest technological developments
such as the internet have resulted in the advancement of the science of
communication to a new level. The process of human communication has evolved
over the years, with many path-breaking inventions and discoveries heralding
revolutions. The invention of pictographs or the first written communication in
the ancient world brought about written communication. These writings were on
stone, and remained immovable.
The invention of paper, papyrus and wax,
culminating in the invention of the printing press in the 15th century made
possible transfer of documents from one place to another, allowing for
uniformity of languages over long distances. Lawal, A.T. (2005). The latest
revolution is the widespread application of electronic technology such as
electronic waves and signals to communicate, manifesting in the electronic
creation and transfer of documents over the World Wide Web (www.wikipediacom)
Social
media which are form of electronic communication have become the highest
activity on the internet. They refer to social networking websites developed to
specifically to help people share their views and stay in touch with their
friends, relatives and well- wishers.
According to Wikipedia, social media represents a
shift in how people discover, read and share news, information content which
brought about the democratization of information, transforming people from
content readers into publishers.
Social media are also internet sites where people
interact freely, sharing and discussing information about each other and their
lives, using a multi-media mix of personal words, pictures, videos and
audio (Bruce and Douglas; 2008, p.27).
In order to broaden our knowledge on the topic of study, a brief history of
social media will be discussed below.
In the early 1990s, chat rooms and bulletin boards
were forms of social media; in that they helped people connect with others and
share interests. A little later, dating sites hooked together those looking for
partners, and let people connect with people they had known in high school and
college. In the early 2000s, a site called Friendster was set up where people
invited their friends to join and in turn, those friends invited other friends.
The site was popular for a while but it suffered
from technical difficulties and fake profiles and began losing members. Some of
those members went to MySpace, which had actually started in 1999 but became
better known in 2003.Its roots are a little muddy because it received financial
and logistical support from another company called e-Universe, and most of the
early users were e-Universe employees but Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe are
given credit for much of the innovations and success of the site which built up to 115 million users
worldwide. Members post bios, photos, blogs, videos, and other things that
strike their fancy, and some TV programmes to air on MySpace. In 2005, Rupert
Murdoch‟s
News Corporation (parent of Fox Broadcasting) bought MySpace for 580 million
dollars.
A competitor to MySpace, Facebook was started in
2004 by Mark Zuckerberg while he was a student at Harvard University; it grew
up rapidly about 2007. At first Facebook was solely for college and high school
students, but Zuckerberg opened it to everyone and like MySpace, it encourages
all types of member postings (Lynn Gross, 2010). Apart from the above mentioned
social media tools, there are also others. These include; Twitter, YouTube,
BlackBerry Messenger, Flickr, Word Press, Blogger, Badoo, Live Journal,
Wikipedia, TypePad, Second Life, Lulu, and many others. All these social media appear in many forms including blogs and
microblogs, forums, and message boards, social networks, wikis, virtual worlds,
social bookmarking, tagging and news, writing communities, digital storytelling
and scrapbooking, data, content, image, video sharing, podcast portals and
collective intelligence.
Similarly, Twitter is an online social networking
service and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read
text-based messages of up to 140 characters, known as "tweets".
Olayinka, S. O. (2014)
It
was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched in July. The service
rapidly gained worldwide popularity, with over 500 million active users as of
2012, generating over 340 million tweets daily and handling over 1.6 billion
search queries per day. Since its launch Twitter has become one of the top 10
most visited websites on the internet and has been described as "the SMS
of the Internet." Unregistered users can read tweets, while registered
users can post tweets through the website interface, SMS, or a range of apps
for mobile devices.
Journalism on the other hand, is the deliberate
and conscious efforts to gather information, collating and analyzing data for
the purpose of informing, educating, and entertaining the people with a view of making an appropriate decision (Qasim
Akinreti; 2007). Journalism is also an investigation and reporting
events, issues and trends to a large audience. Ewuola, P.O. (2002). Though there are many variations of
journalism, the ideal is to inform the intended audience about topics ranging
from government and business organizations to cultural aspects of society such
as arts and entertainment. The field of journalism include; editing,
photojournalism and documentary. Isamuko, B. J. (2010).
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Social media have certainly changed the way
journalists work, how stories are developed and disseminated. Social media or online
journalism places far more power in the hands of the users allowing the reader
to challenge the traditional role of information dissemination. Traditional
media have been forced to adopt the new media from wider reach and
accessibility. Adeagbo (2011) writes that traditional newspapers are folding up
in the USA as more people migrate online to get their news thus owing to the
unemployment market in their thousands. To survive, many of the unemployed
journalists have had to turn to using blogging for journalism to not only earn
a living, but do the only thing they know how and to do and love to do. Though,
journalists in Nigeria have not yet started losing their jobs. The population
of youths who migrate on line to get their news grows this phenomenon is bound
to have a negative effect on the circulation figures of newspapers and
listening audience in Nigeria.
To this end, the research is geared towards
comparing social media and radio stations on the assessment of news information
using Twitter and Splash F.M Ibadan.
1.2
OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
The study had the following objectives:
i.
To examine the extent
which students of University of Ibadan are exposed to social media networking tool.
ii.
To determine the type
of information source which University of Ibadan students rely on.
iii.
To ascertain whether University
of Ibadan students’ prefer Twitter to Splash FM
iv.
To find out the factors
that influence students’ preference for Splash FM.
v.
To examine factors
influence students’ preference for Twitter and why if yes.
vi.
To determine whether improvement
in Splash F.M programmes can change students’ preference.
vii.
To determine whether
the use of Twitter is enhancing the quality of information that students are
receiving.
viii.
To ascertain some of the
problems confronting social networking sites as source of information
particularly twitter.
1.4
RESEARCH
QUESTIONS
i.
To what extent are
students of University of Ibadan exposed to social media networking tools?
ii.
What type of
information source do University of Ibadan students rely on?
iii.
To what extent do University
Ibadan students’ prefer Twitter to Splash FM?
iv.
What factors
influence students’ preference for Splash FM?
v.
What factors
influence students’ preference for Twitter and why if yes?
vi.
Will improvement in Splash
F.M programmes change students’ preference?
vii.
To what extent does
the use of twitter enhance the quality of information receive by University of
Ibadan students?
viii.
What are the problems
of social networking sites as source of information?
1.5 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The scope of this study has been narrowed down to
focus on University of Ibadan students. The demographic factors of the students
will be examines such as academic levels, age, course of study, gender, marital
status and other before the structuring and administration of research
instrument (questionnaire). With the view possibly ascertain the degree of
communication effectiveness due to technology change.
1.6 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
This study will be of immeasurable importance to
journalists, media organizations, news agencies, editors, lecturers and
students in the field of journalism and mass communication as well as other
researchers who will want to embark on same study the future.
The
study will help journalists to source useful information by using social media
networking tools as well as provide them with a guide on how to write online
stories. It will also help journalists to interact with their audience and
identify their information needs. The study will also help journalists who have
rarely embraced social media to do so in order to increase their productivity.
1.7 LIMITATION TO THE STUDY
Wide research of this nature cannot be carried out
without some constrains, this constrains pose a lot of limitations to this
work.
¨
Duration for the
research work is relatively short.
¨
Stress emanated from
other academic activities is also another constrain.
¨
Little materials are
also available because the work is relatively new.
¨
Financial constrain
poses another challenges.
¨
Most information are
gathered through newspapers and internet
1.8 DEFINITION OF TERMS
Information
Technology: It refers to the application of
computers and telecommunications equipment to store, retrieve, transmit and
manipulate data, it also encompasses other information distribution
technologies such as television and telephones, computer hardware, software,
electronics, semiconductors, internet, telecom equipment, e-commerce and
computer services.
Social
Networking: A group of internet-based applications
that build on the ideological and technological foundations of web 2.0 and that
allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content. (Kaplan and
Haenlein, 2010)
Blogs:
A blog (a contraction of the term "web log") is a type of website,
usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary,
descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries
are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order.
Information:
This means an idea, feeling, expression packaged in a particular form.
Internet:
It refers to global computer network providing a variety of information and
communication facilities, consisting of interconnected networks using
standardized communication protocols.
Citizen
Journalism: This is the practice is a term
which describes the act of individual within a given society, community, state
or nation engaging in the gathering, processing and publishing of news
materials.
Social media:
The term refers to the Internet-based social networking websites developed to
specifically help people share their views and stay in touch with their
friends, relatives and well wishers such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram,
Whatsapp, Wikipedia, YouTube, and other social media networking tools.
Journalism:
This is the practice of writing, editing, and disseminating information to the
public through radio, television, newspaper and magazine.
Modern
journalism: It is a term used to describe the
new era in journalism where internet and computers are used in almost every
journalistic activity.
