Awareness And Use Of Social Media Network In Information Search And Retrieval By Library And Information Science Students In Tertiary Institutions Of Benue State Nigeria

Awareness And Use Of Social Media Network In Information Search And Retrieval By Library And Information Science Students In Tertiary Institutions Of Benue State Nigeria

Abstract

Today, information has been seen as heavily stressed factor that shapes the society, particularly the introduction of social media technology. This study therefore examined the awareness and use of social media network in information search and retrieval by library and information science students in tertiary institutions of Benue state, Nigeria. Five (5) research objectives were formulated for this study. The study adopted descriptive survey research design. The population for this study comprised of undergraduate students in University of Agriculture Makurdi, University of Health Technology, Otukpo Benue State, and Benue State University Makurdi. Israel (2003) sample size model was used to calculate the sample size with precision levels of 5% and confidence level of 95% and the recommended sample size was three hundred and eighty-five (385).A simple random sampling technique was used to select the sample from the population. The self-designed questionnaire was divided into five sections. Content-related approach of validation was conducted to ensure validity of the instrument while Cronbach alpha was used to test the reliability of the instrument and the overall reliability coefficient of the instrument is r= 0.679. The collated copies of the questionnaire were analysed with the IBM SPSS version 21.0. The presentations of the data for the research objectives were done using frequency counts and percentage table. The findings of the study shows Facebook as the most preferred social media tools by undergraduate students. The findings further revealed that there is a high usage of social media among undergraduate students. The findings also showed that the major purposes of using social media by undergraduate students are to connect with friends and for academic activities. However, the findings generally show that there is a significant relationship between purpose of using social media and information search and retrieval behaviour of undergraduate students. Since the benefits attached to using social media cannot be overemphasized, among numerous recommendations based on the findings, the study therefore recommended that, university management should ensure that they integrate social media applications into their learning and teaching system.

Table of Content

Chapter One

1.0 Introduction

• 1.1 Background to the Study
• 1.2 Statement of the Problem
• 1.3 Objectives of the Study
• 1.4 Research Question
• 1.5 Research Hypothesis
• 1.6 Significance of the Study
• 1.7 Scope of Study
• 1.8 Limitation of the Study
• 1.9 Definition of Terms
• 1.10 Organisation of the Study

Chapter Two

2.0 Literature Review

• 2.1 Conceptual Framework
• 2.2 Concept of Social Media Networks
• 2.3 Categories of Social Media
• 2.4 Academic Use of Social Media
• 2.5 Extent of Social Media Usage by Undergraduate Students
• 2.6 Social Media Tools Preferred by Students
• 2.7 Purposes of Using Social Media By Students
• 2.8 Overview of Information Behaviour
• 2.9 Theoretical Framework
• 2.9.1 Diffusion of Innovation Theory
• 2.9.2 Uses and Gratification Theory

Chapter Three

3.0 Research Methodology

• 3.1 Research Design
• 3.2 Population
• 3.3 Sample and Sampling Technique
• 3.4 Instrument for Data Collection
• 3.5 Validity of the Instrument
• 3.6 Reliability of the Instrument
• 3.7 Method of Data Collection
• 3.8 Data Analysis

Chapter Four

4.0 Results and Discussion

• 4.1 Result
• 4.2 Discussion

Chapter Five

5.0 Summary, Conclusion and Recommendation

• 5.1 Summary
• 5.2 Conclusion
• 5.3 Recommendation
• References
• Appendix

Chapter One

1.0 Introduction

1.1 Background to the Study

Social media is often lauded as a potentially transformative information resource. Information is the power house of the present emerging technological driven society. Today, information has been seen as heavily stressed factor that shapes the society. Information is a life blood of present society; it is accepted as a key issue in today’s viable world (Prabhavathi, 2011). Over the last several years, information increased significantly in a large variety of formats. This information overload gave the foundation to the idea of studying the information searching or seeking behaviour of users or human information behaviour (Fasola & Olabode, 2013).

Information that is publicly available can be shared to enable people to perform various tasks in their private and official capacities (Davies, Rafique, Vincent, Fairclough, Packer, Vincent & Haq, 2012). The need to make choices among several information sources leads to variations in people’s information behaviour. In judiciously making effective use of information, the society has exhibited a kind of behaviour known as information behaviour. Information behaviour has been drastically transformed by the arrival of the internet and, in recent years, of social media. Just as it is known, new technologies helps facilitate and provide flexibility in communicating and sharing of resources.

The 21st Century has been characterized with unprecedented increase in the technological advancement around the world. Among these are advances in Internet facilities, establishment of libraries, development of information technology, improvements in communications multimedia and sophistication. Adeniyi (2004) established that everybody needs information to reach his or her potential and that the more information that is available to a system about itself and about its environment the more reliable it becomes and the greater its chances of survival.
On other hands, social media has become pervasive, playing a dominant role in the social structure of the society and changing the nature of social relationships (Al-Sharqi, Hashim&Kutbi, 2015). It has revolutionized the way we communicate, interact and socialize. This new approach to consuming and creating information is in particular attractive to youths as a platform and space for activities not possible in the face-to-face context (Leea, Chena, Lia& Lin, 2015). Social media plays a vital role in the sharing of information and is used to convey different types of information (i.e. sensitive, sensational, political and casual information) (Osatuyi, 2013).

Although the history of social media is not really new, but it has only recently become part of our mainstream cultural activities both in the social and business world, people have been using digital media for networking, socializing and information gathering almost exactly like now for over 30 years (Boyd &Ellion, 2008). Defining social media, in ClickZ, social media started as a concept many years ago but has evolved into sophisticated technology. The concept of social media can be dated back to the use of the analog telephone for social interaction. Facebook started as a local social network made for the students of Harvard. It was developed by a sophomore, Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook was actually made by hacking Harvard’s data base containing identification images of students. The initial idea was actually to compare the faces of students with images of animals, for entertainment purposes. However, due to the potentially damaging contents of the site, the creators decided to put it down before it caught the attention of school authorities. The application was shut down, but the idea of creating an online community of students came to existence. The platform was then improved and sooner than they expected,
Facebook was released in campuses other than Harvard. Thereafter, high schools were already starting to get attracted to the idea of having online communities, thus opening the website to the younger population. In 2006, facebook.com ultimately offered the opportunity to the rest of the world. As 2007 approached, the registrants reached an overwhelming digit- roughly a million dozen .Facebook has grown to become the biggest and most popular social networking site today with a population of above 500 million active users (Facebook statistics, 2012).

Social media has increasingly influenced the information behavior of students in higher education over the past decade. Social media is a broad concept covering a wide range of the Internet applications that support social communication between individuals (whether direct or indirect, synchronous or asynchronous), with an emphasis on interaction between users (i.e. conversation or dialogue), user-generated content, and building of online relationships and communities (Turban, King & Lang, 2011). Social media is centered on enhancing the progress of communication in the society i.e. sharing of ideas, thoughts, and opinions among people.

Among the vast variety of online tools which are available for communication, social networking sites (SNS) have become the most modern and attractive tools for connecting people throughout the world (Aghazamani, 2010). It is also about allowing people to connect with others just as it has been for many years. According to Khoo (2010), social media applications have influenced all areas of our lives and are having a major impact on how we live, work, play, learn and socialize. Social media in its various manifestations present a golden opportunity and rich environment to study information behaviour, as much of the information (in text, image and video format) are recorded and stored in publicly accessible repositories and on personal devices (Khoo, 2010).

Basically, social media is a collection of interactive web-based applications integrated on Web 2.0 technology that enable active interactions between web multiple users to create and share information (Boyd & Ellison, 2007; O’Reilly, 2007). Although social media and Web 2.0 are distinct concepts they have been used interchangeably in the literature. However, Web 2.0 represents a newer platform foundation of the web which consists of a set of technologies such as Adobe Flash, Really Simple Syndication or RSS to enable richer content to be published on the web (O’Reilly, 2007). By contrast, the foundation of social media is based on user generated content (UGC), that is, various forms of media content created by internet users and available on the web based on Web 2.0 technology (Kaplan &Haenlein, 2010). Social media applications include blogs and micro blogs (logger & twitter), wikis (Wikipedia), social networking (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn), multimedia sharing services (YouTube), content syndication (e.g. RSS feeds), podcasting and content tagging services (Anderson, 2007; Hansen, Shneiderman, & Smith, 2010).

Social media technologies are enjoying a phenomenal success, for example, Facebook, a social networking website, claims that its active users reached 1.8 billion worldwide, more than 50% of which log in every day (Facebook, 2017). In the same vein, Twitter, a micro-blogging website hosts 317 million users who post on average 500 million tweets per day (Twitter 2017); More than 1 billion unique users visit YouTube each month, watching more than 6 billion hours of video (YouTube 2017), and at the same time it is estimated that there are over 181 million blogs worldwide (Nielsen 2012). Among the users of social media are students who use social media tools for many purposes such as access to information, group discussion, resource sharing and entertainment (Wang, Chen & Liang, 2011). This has generated speculation on their use and related positive and negative implications, in both the short and long terms.
The expediency of accessing remote information through social media has resulted in tremendous popularity for web,which has given a new dimension to the library and information centers. In light of this, the job role and concept of library and librarians is dramatically changing with the application of information and communication technologies (Quadri, 2012). The Internet has successfully entered all the areas and to a great extent is affecting the library and information centers. A wide range of public domain and commercial information sources are currently available on the internet such as bibliographical/full text databases, table of contents of journals, discussion forums, technical reports, preprints, biographies, directories, data archives, teaching and training material, library catalogues, software etc (Vijayakumar, 2015). Furthermore, Internet use has become a way of life for the majority of higher education students all around the world (Vijayakumar, 2015). Social media support all kinds of social interactions, mediated and captured by Internet applications including mobile applications (Khoo, 2015). The online communities that evolve exhibit social and collaborative information behaviour that can be studied.

In this modern society, information behaviour is a day-to-day activity that is essential to people in of all vocations and skilled occupations across various disciplines and professional groups (Yemisi, 2014). The proliferation of online social media has undoubtedly affected how students nowadays learn. Twenty first century learners, often considered critically engaged learners, are the technologically savvy students in today’s classrooms (Moore et al., 2008).They also tend to be plugged into social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and many more throughout the course of their everyday activities (Rhoades, Friedel, &Irani, 2008).

The term information behaviour is the currently preferred term used to describe ways in which human beings interact with information, in particular, the ways in which people seek and utilize information (Bates, 2010). In other words, information behaviour covers a wide range of user behaviour in relation to information and information systems, including information need generation, information creation, seeking, encountering, sharing, giving, assessment, management and use. These are studied in the context of different kinds of tasks in work, every day and play environments. All these aspects of information behaviour can be studied in the context of social media use.

George (2012) claimed that some of the challenges associated with use of social media stem from the risks inherent in student internet usage. Romero-Fríasand Montano (2010) further argued that it exposes students to inappropriate material, un-wanted adult interactions and bullying from peers. Similar remarks were made by Romero-Fríasand Montano (2010) that Web 2.0 is also a source of concern regarding issues such as, privacy, authorship and ownership rights, digital divide in the classroom or time management issues. Additionally, Thomas (2009) stated that information overload is another challenge, whereas Keen (2007), lamented quality of content as a major concern.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

There is no doubt that social media has gained wider acceptability and usability and is also becoming probably the most important communication tools among students especially at the higher level of educational pursuit. However, it has been observed that the rate at which students use social media is critically affecting their information behaviour either positively or negatively (Christopher, 2010). Additionally, several studies have been carried out by some researchers like Lenhart and Madden (2007); Boyd (2009); Madge, Meek, Wellens and Hooley (2009); Christopher (2010); Virkuss (2010); Wang, Chen and Liang (2011); Kumar (2012); Ndaku (2013); Kumar and Kumar (2013); Eke, Omekwu and Odoh (2014) on the use of social media among undergraduate students. It is therefore evident that these studies were conducted on social media usage but focuses of those studies were mainly on adoption, utilization and challenges in using social media. However, there is more to explore in terms of influence of social media on information seeking behavior of university undergraduate students, particularly among undergraduate students in Benue state. In line with thisproposition, this study seeks to investigate the awareness and use of social media network in information search and retrieval by library and information science students in tertiary institutions of Benue state, Nigeria.

1.3 Objectives of the Study

The aim of this study is to investigate the awareness and use of social media network in information search and retrieval by library and information science students in tertiary institutions of Benue state, Nigeria. Specifically, the objectives of the study include to;

1. Identify social media networks preferred by library and information science students;
2. Determine the extents of social media usage by library and information science students;
3. Examine the purpose of social media usage among library and information science students;
4. Study the information search and retrieval behaviour of library and information science students on social media networks;
5. Investigate the influence of social media usage on information search and retrieval of library and information science students.

1.4 Research Question

The following research questions are formulated to guide this research:

1. What social media networksare preferred by library and information science students?
2. What is the extent of social media usage by library and information science students?
3. What is the purpose of social media usage among library and information science students?
4. What is the the information search and retrieval behaviour of library and information science students on social media networks?
5. What is the influence of social media usage on information search and retrieval of library and information science students?

1.5 Research Hypothesis

• HO1 There is no significant influence of social media networks on information search and retrieval by library and information science students in tertiary institutions of Benue state, Nigeria
• HA1 There is a significant influence of social media networks on information search and retrieval by library and information science students in tertiary institutions of Benue state, Nigeria

1.6 Significance of the Study

According to Ikoja-Odongo (2000), the importance of a study can be measured by the contributions that it makes to the people under investigation and the society as a whole. It is anticipated that this study will be useful in understanding the influence of social media netwroks on information search and retrieval usage of library and information science studentsin the surveyed universities in Benue state.

It is hoped that the results of this study will assist the management of the university and library, to take note of the social media usage pattern of undergraduate students and how they can capitalize on it to achieve the institutional objectives.

Findings from this study will help tertiary schools administrators to understand the information behaviour of students and the use of social media; knowing this will help them in their policy making.

Also, findings from this study will add to the existing body of knowledge in social media utilization and information behaviour. Hence, it is expected that study will provide a rich source of empirical data for other studies that are related to social media and information behaviour.

1.7 Scope of Study

The general purpose of this study is to investigate the awareness and use of social media network in information search and retrieval by library and information science students in tertiary institutions of Benue state, Nigeria. Specifically, the scope of this study is limited to library and information science students in three universities in Benue state. These universities are University of Agriculture Makurdi, University of Health Technology, Otukpo Benue State, and Benue State University Makurdi. The variables of interest for this study are restricted to social media network utilization and information search and retrieval.

1.8 Limitation of the Study

In the course of this study, the researcher encountered some limitations. There was unwillingness of respondents to fill the questionnaires. Some of the copies questionnaires were also reported missing and it was severally replaced and this affected the researcher negatively finance wise. Also, the researcher faced time constraints and had to combine the research with other academic activities and coursework. Lastly, the researcher made use of selected universities since all the tertiary institutions in Benue state could not be exhausted.

1.9 Definition of Terms

Social Media Networks:

Social media is generally defined as “forms of electronic communication as web sites for social networking and microblogging through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content such as pictures, videos etc.

Social Media Tools:

These are technological products that allow ones to be able to use social media. Examples are: internet, smart-phones, modem, etc.

Library and Information Services:

Refers to the procedures and operations of maintaining, developing and supporting library collection and services behind the scene such as acquisition, cataloguing, classification, inter library loan, document delivery and serial systems.

Information Search:

The information search process is a six-stage process of information seeking behavior in library and information science. The ISP was first suggested by Carol Kuhlthau in 1991. It describes the thoughts, feelings and actions of the searcher, and is often used to describe students.

Information Retrieval:

Is the process of obtaining information system resources that are relevant to an information need from a collection of those resources. Searches can be based on full-text or other content-based indexing.

1.10 Organisation of the Study

This study is organized into five chapters. Chapter one included the background of the study, research problem, research objectives and questions as well as limitation of the study. Chapter two contains the literature review. Chapter three includes the methodology and study area. Chapter Four contains the results and discussion of key findings of the study. Chapter Five finally looks at the summary, conclusions, and recommendations based on the findings.

Chapter Five

5.0 Summary, Conclusion and Recommendation

5.1 Summary

Based on the results emanating from the answers to research question and test of the hypothesis, the major findings of the study as revealed by the analysis are as follows:

1. Most of the social media application are being used by the students, although, there is degree in the variation of their usage. However, the library and information science students are frequent users of social media applications.
2. Among the varieties of social media application used by library and information science students, Facebook has the highest usage. However, there is low usage of LinkedIn and 2go.
3. Library and information science students in Benue state majorly uses social media to connect with friends. However, they also use social media for educational purposes like updating knowledge in their field of study, get relevant information pertaining to their studies, facilitate e- learning and connect with course-mate.
4. Based on the findings, the information searching and retrieval behaviour of library and information science students on social media are eventful. There are different behavioural attitude exhibited by library and information science students which include both psychological and emotional.
5. There is a significant relationship between purpose of using social media and information behavior of library and information science students in selected universities in Benue state, Nigeria.

5.2 Conclusion

In addition to the available empirical evidences, this study has been able to established empirical evidence on the influence of social media usage on information searching and retrieval behaviour of library and information science students in Benue state. Specifically, the type of social media application used by library and information science students, the extent of use, purpose of use, information behaviour on social media and the influence of social media on information behaviour of undergraduate students were established. Therefore, it is believed that establishing this evidence would result in understanding the information behaviour of library and information science students on social media thereby contributing to the initiation of policies that has to with their socio-educational activities.

5.3 Recommendation

Based on the findings of this study, the following are recommended;

1. The benefits of social media can never be overemphasized; therefore university management should ensure that they integrate the social media applications in library service delivery and learning system. For instance, the library can offer reference services on library social media platforms.
2. Students should embrace the use of social media for academic purpose such as sharing of ideas, communication and searching for academic information.
3. The library management should embrace the use of social media for current awareness services, selective dissemination of information and other services in the library.
4. If possible, library should create a unit of social media librarian that will be receiving and answering queries via library social media handles.

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