Abstract

Some school of thought believe that social media is a veritable tool for public relations day to day activities been as a public managment 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 intereaction 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 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