ABSTRACT
In
this era of Information and communication technology, social media especially
blog, YouTube, facebook, whatsApp, twitter, BBM and 2go and many others have
revolutionalised and redefined monopoly of news and information by mass media
(radio, television, newspaper and magazine industries) as it enhanced citizen
participation in news gathering and dissemination. The research investigated
the influence of new media on
information acquisition by undergraduates in Lead City University. New media
has in the recent time turn the citizen not only as information consumers but
also as information distributor which is now known as “Citizen Journalism”.
Most citizen own their own blog, group and room on new media sites where they
publish news stories and acquire more information. Others do get their stories
from videotubes such as YouTube. Survey research method was adopted while
questionnaire were developed as a research tool used to elicit data from the
selected respondents. From the responses gathered, it was observed that
majority of the students are having access to the new media or social
media. Students logged in regularly to
WhatsApp, BBM and Facebook than on other social media. And as a result of this,
the degree of new media usage among Lead City University students is high. Most of the users of new or social media spend
6-10 hour on a daily basis. In order to make online messages more accurate and
credible government should make sure that owners of website and blogs within
the country abide to the laws of defamation, obscenity, and invasion of privacy
and this can be done by setting up a body whose sole responsibility is to
monitor the manifest content of internet materials.
