ABSTRACT
In
this era of Information and communication technology, social media especially
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 study looked into the
social media as channel of information and communication using Kaduna State
University Students as a reference point. Social 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 social media sites where they publish news stories.
Others do submit their stories to websites designed for the purpose of citizen
journalists or to well known media houses that do accept stories from citizen
reporters. 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 social media and are on one or two 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 social media usage among students of Kaduna State
University is high. Most of the users of social media spend 6-10 hour on social
media. Citizen journalism practice should be encouraged by the government and
private establishments as a way of encouraging ICT development in the country.
Government should make sure that owners of website and blogs within the country
abide to the laws of defamation, obscenity, and invasion of privacy. This can
be done by setting up a body whose sole responsibility is squarely on
monitoring the manifest content of internet materials.