CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Today technology has made more universal, the ability to produce media printing, radio and television are some examples of mass media in that they are intended to reach vast audiences. But these forms of media previously could not be produced readily by the average person.

The advent of relatively inexpensive, personal media technologies like blogging, podcasting and internet video allowed the average literate person to do what was therefore restricted to media companies, these forms of media are still referenced to as new but they have become part of society even as much as the traditional media in some parts of the world in a few years, the term “new media” might not be very suitable because these forms are becoming part of our daily lives and the fusion with traditional media might dilute the fact that it is new.

Social media is a form of electronic communication which facilitates interaction based on certain interests and characteristic. Social media are media for social interaction, suing highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques, social media use web-based technologies to transform and broadcast media monologues into social dialogues, they support the democratization of knowledge and information and transform people from content consumers to content consumers.

Origin of Twitter

          The first unassisted off –earth twitter message was posted from the international space station by NASA astronaut T.J. creamer on January 22, 2010. By late November 2010, an average of a dozen updates per day were posted on the astronauts communal account, at NASA, Astronauts, NASA has also hosted over 25 “tweent ups”, events that provide quests with VIP access to network to further the outreach goals of NASA.

          In august 2010, the company appointed Adam Bain as president of Revenue from News Corps FOX audience Network, on September 14, 2010, Twitter launched a redesigned site including a new logo.

Growth of Twitter  

          The company experience rapid growth, it has 400,000 tweets posted per quarter in 2017, this grew to 100 million tweets posted per quarter in 2008, in February 2010, twitter users were sending 50 million tweets per day. By March 2010, the company recorded over 70,000registered applications. As of June 2010, about 65 million tweets were posted each day, equal about 750 tweets sent each second according to twitters. As of march 2011, that was about 140 million tweets posted daily. As noted on compete com, tweeter moved up to third-highest-ranking social network site in January 2009 from its previous rank of twenty-second, Jack Dorsey, a co-founder and the chairman of twitter in 2009.

Twitters usage spikes during prominent events; for example, a record was set during the 1010 FITA world cup when fans wrote 2,940 tweets per second in the thirty-second period after Japan scored against Cameron on June 14, 2010. The record was broken again when 3,085 tweets per second were posted after Los Angeles Lakers’ Victory in the 2010, NBA final on June 17, 2010 and then again at the close of Japan Victory over Denmark in the world cup when users published 3.283 tweets per second. The current record was set during the 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cup. Final between Japan and the United States, when 7,196 tweets per second were published, when American singer Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009, twitter servers crashed after users were updating their status to include the worlds. “Michael Jackson” at a rate of 100,000 tweets per hour.

          Twitter acquired application developer Atebits on April 11, 2010 Atebits had developed the Apple design Award-Winning twitter client were tie for the Mac and phone. The application, now called “Twitter” and distributed free of charge, is the official twitter client for the phone, Ipad and Mac.  

          From September-through October 2010, the company began rolling out “New Twitter” an entirely revamped edition of twitter com changes included the ability to see picture and videos without leaving twitter itself by clicking on individual tweetens which contain links to images and clips from a variety of supported websites including YouTube and flicker, and a complete overhaul of the interface, which shifted links such as a mention and “Retweets”,   above the twitter stream, while “messages” and log out” became accessible via a black bat at the very top of twitter com. As of November 1, 2010 the company confirmed that the “new Twitter Experience” had been rolled out to all users.

          On April 5, 2011, twitter tested a new home page and phased out the “Old twitter, however a glitch came about after the page was launched, so the previous “retro” home page was still in use untill the issues were resolved, the new homepage was reintroduced on April 2010.

          On December 8, 20100, Twitter overhauled its website once more to feature the “fly” design, which the service says it easier for new users to follow and promotes advertising in addition to the home, tab the connect and discover tabs were introduced along with a redesigned profile, and timeline of tweens. The site’s layout has been compared to that of face-book.

          On February 21, 2012, it was announced that twitter and yandex agreed to a partnership yandex a Russian search engine, finds value within the partnership due to twitter’s real time news feeds Twitter’s director of business development explained that it is important to have twitter content where twitter users go.

          On March 21, 2012, twitter celebrated its sixth birthday while also announcing that it was 140 million users and sees 340 million tweets per day, the number of users is up to 40% from their September 2011, number which was said to have been at 100 million at the time in April 2012, twitter announced that it was opening an office in Detroit with the aim of working with automotive brands and advertising agencies, twitter also expanded its office Dublin, on June 4, 2012, twitter announced the purchase of Washington D,C, based web design agency Mehld, upon the purchase, Nalud’s co-founder and director of brands experience, Martin Ringhein, was named twitter’s new design manager, on June 5 a modified logo was unveiled through the company blog, removing the text to showcase the slightly redesigned brid as the sole symbol of twitter

1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

Twitter is ranked as one of the ten-most visited websites worldwide by Alexa’s web traffic analysis. Daily user estimates vary as the company does not publish statistics on active accounts.

It is recorded that at least 2 million and seven hundred Nigerians are on twitter with a good number of them being young (twitter statistic 2010) however, there is no comprehensive knowledge of their activities as well as how the form of media can impact on various aspects of life this work examines the relationship between social media and its usage by Nigerian youths.

The study specifically focuses on the usage habits of young Nigerians and how social media has affected their communication and socialization habits.

1.3 PURPOSE OR OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

1.       The objective of this research is to analyze the social media issue which can be used to educate and inform the general public on the use of social media specially twitter and face-book.

2.       To analyze some of the benefits of social media among people.

3.       To understand how the use of social media has influenced the social cultural behaviour of Nigeria youth

4.       To study the effects of social media on people.

5.       To highlight the success of using social media in this present ICT era.

1.4 RESEARCH QUESTION

1.       To what extent do people use social media as a means of communication and interaction in politics?

2.       How much of time do people devote to chatting and interacting on twitter?

3.       Why do people prefer using twitter and other social media in Nigeria?

4.       What activities do people engage in on twitter?

5.       To what extent is twitter beneficial to people

1.5 HYPOTHESIS

For years, information has been relayed to individuals through traditional media channels like television, newspapers and radio and existing research as demonstrated that traditional media in some ways develop how individuals behave, speak, or act upon a certain topic (News comer 1948, Mutz and Nir, 2010, Erikson, 1976).

A similar assumption underlines the current academic pursuit to analyze modern social media consumption. Other than using social media for status updates and sharing pictures with friends and family individuals are finding that social media are efficient when trying to obtain information (Andzulis Panagopoules) and Rapp, 2012). Proliferation of social media in social and political life (face-book) Twitter YouTube, etc) has brought these new forms of communication to academic scrutiny, currently the rate at which information spreads and generates conversation makes understanding the potential developments of social media an urgent pursuit (Gross  2009).

Within recent years, the popularity of social media have grown tremendously, increasing neatly 40% from 2011 – 2013 alone social media have changed individuals lifestyles and the way people communicate with each other. The core use of social media today is for the user to develop relationships and network with others for their professional career or enjoy social connectivity, sites such as face-book have roughly a million active users per month, along with 82% of those users who use face-book mobile products. Next to face-book, twitter seems to be the next biggest site with 554,750,000 active registered users signing up each day, 58 million tweets per day and 115 million active twitter users every month twitter statistics (2003).

1.6 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

Fundamentally, it is essential we understand current usage and behaviour and identify potential problems so they can bead dressed. This can be seen in the amount of academic studies on social media within the last seen years.

However, Danah Boyd has gathered a collection of research about social networking sites that list approximately one hundred and fifty research papers, three books and seven research reports published in the year 2003-2010 (Boyd, 2010) none of these papers cover Africa. This shows a lack of research that concerns the African region and especially Nigeria where this form of media is greatly used.

Therefore the overall motivation for conducting this study is to contribute to research about social media in Nigeria.

This research should also create a platform for further research should provide useful data for market researchers, marketing and product development professional as well as educations as to how they can maximize social media for optimum benefit in their various fields.

1.7 SCOPE OF DELIMITATION OF THE STUDY

These investigations focused specifically on the usage habits of users of twitter in this present era ITC in Nigeria.

1.8 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY

Although this study has accomplished the purpose which it sets out to achieve, one of the very limitations is that the validity of the result or finding is defending on the honesty of the respondents in providing the needed information.

Due to constraint of time and money, it is difficult to carry out the research extensively. This led to the limiting of the scope cognizance was also taken to the fact that the academic calendar was too short and academic workload was enormous, as a result of this, no time to run around for the work.

1.9 DEFINITION OF TERMS

SOCIAL MEDIA:

A group of internet based applications that builds on the ideological and technological foundations of web 210 and that allows the creation and exchange of user generated content, (Kaplan and Iteinlein, 2010).

SOCIAL SKILLS:

Any skills facilitating interaction and communication with others. Social rules and relations are ways through a process called socialization.

CYBERSPACE:  

This is the elections medium of computer network in which online communication takes place.

BLOGS:

A blog (a contraction of the term web long) 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.

VLOGS:

Video blogging sometimes shortened to vlogging of vidblogging is a form of blogging for which the medium is video and is a form of internet television. Entries often combine embedded video or a video link with supporting text, images, and other metadata.

INSTANT MESSAGING:

Instant messaging (IM) is a form of real-time direct text based communication between two or more peoples, using shared clients, the text is conveyed via devices connected over a network such as the internet.

TWITTER:

This is one of the social networking service and micro blogging services that enables users to send and read text based messages of up to 140 characters known as tweets.