ABSTRACT
Some school of thought believe that social media is
a veritable tool for public relations day to day activities been as a public
management incline profession. It is on this notion that the research is geared towards assessing the
influence of social media on the
practice of public relations in Bowen University Public Relations Unit.
The research is anchored on Technology Determinism Theory and Four Models of Public Relations by Grunig and Hunt which stated that technology shapes how we as
individuals in a society think, feel, act, and how society are operates as we
move from one technological age to another while
the later posits that social
media which is online communication platform is
good at fostering and building
interaction between an
institution and its various publics. Survey research as a quantitative research method was adopted coupled with 40 copies of
questionnaires that were administered to respondents within PRs Unit of Bowen
University, Iwo, Osun State out of which 35 copies that were correctly filled
and analysed using frequency and
percentage table method with SPSS version 20. Findings show
that Bowen University Public Relations Unit is using social media to some
extent particularly Facebook and Twitter since 6 years ago. Bowen University is boost of over 1000
friends on Facebook and almost the same figure on Twitter. It was also observed that Bowen
University’s last update was in 2014 which shows that Bowen Public Relations
Unit are not effective in the use of social media for social interaction
between and among its various publics as expected. It is recommended that public relations Unit of the Bowen
University should pay serious attention to the online presence because out of
the about 7.4 million world population over 3.2 million people are online
according to CiCso. It also want public relations to keep
eyes on the school activities online, update its pages as appropriate and check
those who might be using a fake social media page to defraud innocent people.
