Abstract
The study was on the impact of social media on political awareness of students of education political science in public universities in Enugu State, Nigeria. Survey research design was adopted for the investigation. One research question was answered while one null hypothesis was formulated and tested at 0.05 alpha level. Population of the study comprised all the 1,345 students of Education Political Science in the two major public universities in Enugu State, UNN and ESUT. Sample size of 404 was drawn through the stratified proportionate sampling technique. A researcher’ s developed instrument titled ‘ Social Media and Political Awareness Scale (SMPAS) was used for data collection. The instrument was confirmed reliable through test- retest method with 0.76 as the reliability coefficient. The researcher with the help of four research assistants administered and retrieved 100% of the questionnaire through the direct approach. The mean was adopted for analysis of the research question, while z-test was applied in testing the null hypothesis. The study found that Social Media to a high extent influence students’ political awareness. It was further found that mean ratings of students of UNN and ESUT did not differ significantly. It was concluded that social media has impact on political awareness of students. The study recommended that students should learn to identify genuine social media platforms housing political data and information, so as to decipher what political information is genuine or fake.
References
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