PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY: NIGERIANS’ USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA FOR POLITICS

CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.2 CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

2.2.1 Concept Of Social Media

According to Sherman (2000) the term “social media” was in 2007 coined by Danah in Boyed of the school of information at the University of California and Nicole B. Ellison of the Department of Telecommunications, information studies and media at Michigan State University. Even though the term is usually regarded by several people to mean the same with similar concepts like new media and social networking sites, however, the two concepts are not actually the same. In order to rightly contextualize the concept of social media, it is imperative to consider what social networking sites are. Boyd and Ellison (2008) opined that “social networking sites are web-based services that allow individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, articulates a list of other users with whom they share a common connection, and view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system”. Boyd and Ellison’s definition provides us with an understanding for describing social media. According to them, social media is a medium that allows individuals to share important information with friends. Social media therefore, is a subset of information communication technologies. Corroborating Boyed and Ellison’s definition, Chijioke (2013) asserted that “social media are simply internet based interactive platforms through which people can create and exchange information in a participatory manner on a real-time basis.” He went further to note that they are online democratic and participatory communication channels that allow inhibited exchange of information and documents among users. According to Arthur (2011), social media are internet-based tools and services that allow users to engage with each other, generate content, distribute, and search for information online. It is the interactive or collaborative nature of the medium that makes them “social”. In a nutshell, this paper defined social media as online tools that allow communication of information online and make engagement and collaboration possible. Specifically, social media here is used to refer to face book, Twitter, YouTube, Blogs, MySpace, Friendster, Linkedin and many others. The advent of the internet which brought about the development of different forms of social media platforms is increasingly supporting democratic engagement and free flow of information between individuals in emerging democracies. Citizens are not merely consuming information content, but are privileged to become content producers, thereby encouraging participatory democracy which is the hallmark of democracy.