CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.0 Background to the Study
With the revolution of media to digital media there are changes amongst members of the society especially youths of today who are usually tagged “digital natives”. The term has become a placeholder for those born after the 1980s, who are witnessing the transformation of computer technologies and their ability to integrate these technologies into their lives thus qualifies them to be natives of these technologies. However, these digital technologies are usually associated with Internet, websites, computer, multimedia, computer games, CD ROMs and DVDs and other new applications such as „Whatsapp‟, „2go‟, „BBM‟.
With the new media in vogue, technology industries are utilizing the opportunity to produce innovative devices such as laptops, notebooks, Ipad and even smart phones with highly digitalized and diversified functions. These smart phones are blackberry, IPhone, Android, Nokia, Samsung, Techno products flood the market and digital natives, immigrants form the bulk of consumers of these products. It is trendy especially in its reconverged and recombined form usually in the handheld systems synonymous with dressing which is evident in hand clutching devices (phones, Ipad), hearing in form of music (earpiece devices). These all contribute in forming identities associated with purchase and ownership of trendy devices.
Basically, new media technologies are breaking boundaries in communication and it offers a wide range of activities in which users can indulge in. It is dynamic and flexible in nature which makes it able to produce and reproduce content faster and more
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efficiently than the conventional media although it has its own lapses. Notwithstanding, it is compressible; large files are easily converted into smaller units of contents e.g. Gigabytes-Megabytes-Kilobytes and installed into devices according to its capacity whereby dictionary, bible, games are converted into mobile devices, flash. It is also networkable; transcending geographical location in terms of information passing through emails, instant messaging, multimedia messages, and blogs. It is highly interactive; this is the function that is highly utilized by students and as such virtual communities are formed where individuals from different race/ continent/ from all works of life share information about themselves without necessarily knowing themselves before and it is done by the social media sites such as „Facebook‟, „Twitter‟, „Skype‟, „2go‟, „my space‟, which acts as a platform for youths to express themselves and make new friends easily.
It is also easily manipulated in positive form through the convergence of media forms and in negative form through deviant ways whereby individuals break into codes to gain access to secret information as evident in „yahoo yahoo‟ fraudulent practice of hacking into institutions/ individuals bank account, delve into country‟s secret information as evident in „wikileaks‟ revelations. It is also dense; it is compatible and smaller than the traditional media that is usually big and it still performs a lot of functions through applications embedded in it. These numerous functions and applications embedded in these devices thus make it attractive to digital natives especially in social networking and text messaging. As rightly observed by Shah and Jansen (2011:13):
For many digital natives, the social network works as a safety net- they might never use their social networks in order to mobilize crowds for change, but it is the first platforms of expression. They are familiar with the potentials of the network, as they organize their social life using these platforms.
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These serve as a platform for youths to be heard by offering and contributing their own content rather than being just receivers of all sorts of content.
However, before the popularity of digital media in Nigeria especially in the Ahmadu Bello University community, the study culture of A.B.U students was highly influenced by the Kashim Ibrahim Library (KIL) and other departmental libraries. Hence, the advent of computer usage and the upgrade to wireless connections in the school and the ownership of mobile technologies with Internet access amongst students from the „2000s‟ heralds the digital age and thus forms the cadre of a new set of citizens known as digital natives for whom technology has become part and parcel of their lives, defining their social and intellectual development unlike their predecessors who basked in the era of analogue technologies. With the influx of new media there are bound to be changes in the society and hence the university is not left out. The university is a fertile ground for the utilization of digital media because it is an institution that thrives on information and communication which is vital to the growth of any society.
The trend of wide range usage of new media provides for opportunities and also as a source of distraction and diversion. This proves that technology can be double edged. Baran (2002:83), explains why technology is a double edge sword thus;
Its power for -good and for bad- resides in us. The same aviation technology that we use to visit relatives halfway around the world can be used to deliver bombs to our cities and theirs. The same communication technologies used to create a truly global village can be used to dehumanize and standardize the people who live in it.
And as the US gun lobby posits; “gun don‟t kill, people do”, so it is what we make of ICT that matters. This also applies to students who through the use of new media can boost their academic work through conducting researches by getting information