Awareness and Compliance with Social Media Regulations by Undergraduates of Select Universities in South East Nigeria

Abstract

The emergence of the social media has put the power of communication in the hands of individuals. This exposes the online platform to lots of abuses. To curb this, the government has come up with different forms of regulations to check the abuse of the Internet which has become the order of the day. Since most of the Internet and social media users are youth most of whom are in the universities, this work looked at the awareness and compliance of these students towards the different social media regulations. It is guided by three research objectives and the diffusion of Innovation theory. Out of a population of 218, 949, the researcher, using the Taro Yamane's sample selection formula, selected a sample of 500 respondents from the population. Using the multi-stage sampling procedure, the researcher randomly selected three states out of the five states in the region. In the same manner, three universities were selected from each of the three states - one federal, one state and one private university. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data from the respondents. The finding showed that there is low awareness and low compliance to the regulations. The researcher therefore recommends a shift from the communication paradigm employed by the government in reaching the youths who use the social media. The government should also employ the use of the social media in official communication especially when the youths are the target audience