IMPACT OF TWITTER BAN ON ONLINE SOCIAL COMMUNICATION
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
INTRODUCTION
Our focus in this chapter is to critically examine relevant literature that would assist in explaining the research problem and furthermore recognize the efforts of scholars who had previously contributed immensely to similar research. The chapter intends to deepen the understanding of the study and close the perceived gaps.
Precisely, the chapter will be considered in two sub-headings:
- Conceptual Framework
- Chapter Summary
2.1 CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
SOCIAL MEDIA
The term ‗Social media‘ refers to the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue. In the words of Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein, social media is "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content." Social media is media for social interaction as a superset beyond social communication. Enabled by ubiquitously accessible and scalable communication techniques, social media has substantially changed the way organizations, communities, and individuals communicate. Social media takes on many different forms including magazines, Internet forums, weblogs, social blogs, microblogging, wikis, podcasts, photographs or pictures, video, rating and social bookmarking. By applying a set of theories in the field of media research (social presence, media richness) and social processes (self-presentation, self-disclosure) Kaplan and Haenlein created a classification scheme for different social media types in their Business Horizons article published in 2010. According to Kaplan and Haenlein there are six different types of social media: collaborative projects (e.g. Wikipedia), blogs and microblogs (e.g. Twitter), content communities (e.g. Youtube), social networking sites (e.g. Facebook), virtual game worlds (e.g. World of Warcraft) and virtual social worlds (e.g. Second Life). Technologies include: blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, crowdsourcing and voice over IP, to name a few. Many of these social media services can be integrated via social network aggregation platforms. An overview of social media has been shown below
Massively Multiplayer Online game (MMO) is a multiplayer video game which is capable of supporting hundreds or thousands of players simultaneously. By necessity, they are played on the Internet, and usually feature at least one persistent world. Cartrider, World Warcraft are some of the examples of MMO. Through social media, a person can also publish any news and views via web. Digg is one prime example of such media. It is a social news website. Facebook Connect, Digg Dialog, Digg Bar, Digg API( Application Programming Interface) are the important features of Digg. A person can discuss on any issues on skype, yahoo or google talk, and also there is the option of bulletin boards. Social networking is fast catching up as a means of keeping contacts and also sharing information with others. Microblogging is another way of posting messages online. Twitter is a popular microblogging website. There are also livestreaming of videos available online for the viewers to see. A virtual world is an online community that takes the form of a computer-based simulated environment through which users can interact with one another and use and create objects. The term has become largely synonymous with interactive 3D virtual environments, where the users take the form of avatars visible to others. These avatars usually appear as textual, two-dimensional, or three-dimensional representations, although other forms are possible (auditory and touch sensations for example). Virtual worlds are not limited to games but, depending on the degree of immediacy presented, can encompass computer conferencing and text based chat rooms. Livestream, formerly known as Mogulus, is a live streaming video platform that allows users to view and broadcast video content using a camera and a computer through the internet. Users can stream live video or broadcast pre-recorded video in their channels, utilizing multiple cameras and on-screen graphics. Social gaming commonly refers to playing games as a way of social interaction, as opposed to playing games in solitude, like some card games (solitaire) and the single-player mode of many video games. Social networks sites like orkut, MySpace, YouTube etc. and numerous other similar sites ( including the social bookmarking ‗ sites like www.redit.com, www.digg.com and www.facebook.com ) on the Web help create new virtual communities where discussion and exchange of ideas through words, images and sounds take place across national and regional borders. He basic features of communication that are included in any social networking sites are inboxes, walls, status messages, notes, and comments. Most of the people prefer using social network as the primary means of communication. Initially social networks started with simply a profile picture, profile details, and some form of a wall, and drove most of their usage via communication. Social network is a new communication medium along which people broadcast and receive various bits of information.
History of social media
When we think of social media, the we generally think of facebook and twitter. However, in reality it is more than that. The earliest ways to send messages over long distances were probably both audio and visual. People used to communicate smoke signals by day and beacon fires by night in ancient China, Egypt, and Greece. Drums were used in many parts of the world to extend the range of the human voice for communication as well. The seeds of social media were sown during 550 BC when the regular postal system was established in Iran where horse riders and horse-drawn wagons carried mail. Usually, mail consisted of governmental dispatches and was delivered from one place to another. The evolution of social media can be gauged from Figure 2 as given below;
The 18th and 19th century were breakthrough period where devices like the telegraph (1792), telephone (1890) and radio (1891) ushered in a new era of the sending and receiving messages over long distances. The increasing number of express messages between businesses, financial and legal offices and banks in growing cities, as well as busy street traffic, gave rise to new methods of telegram and letter transportation. The pneumatic post was introduced to combat the shortcomings of the telegraphic network in Paris. The invention of telephone and radio took the meaning of communication to another level . The 20th century was marked by the growth and development of internet . With the growth and development of internet, there came era of exchange of messages from one person to another digitally or via web. Email, ARPANET, USENET, BBS (Bulletin Board System ), IRC (Internet Relay Chat), Listserv, Blogger, Six Degrees, Livejournal, Napster were some of the important sites for social interactions and sharing. The 21st century saw a spurt in the growth of social networking sites by the launching of Friendster, Fotolog, Photobucket, Flickr, Orkut, Facebook, Ning, Digg, Twitter, Netlog, Youtube etc. Social media has come a long way since the days of the telegraph and even the more recent days of Internetrelay chats (IRC), and it continues to evolve. In the last few years, social media has become a convention of the online landscape. Major social networks and social media websites make changes and improvements on a fairly regular basis, so it‘s sure to keep evolving in coming years.
Social Media
The term “Social media” is defined as the application that allows users to converse and interact with each other; to create, edit and share new forms of textual, visual and audio content, and to categorize, label and recommend existing forms of content (Selwyn 2012). Social media therefore denotes to the wide collection of Internet based and mobile services that connect people together to communicate, participate,
collaboratively interact, discuss and exchange ideas and information on an online community. The kind of Internet services commonly associated with social media (sometimes referred to as “Web 2.0”) include the following:
Weblog.
Weblogs or blogs, as they are branded, are easily created and updateable websites that allow authors to publish to the Internet instantly, hence allowing instructors and students to communicate easily.
Basically a blog is an online journal in which pages are usually displayed in reverse chronological order. Blogs can be hosted for free on websites such as WordPress, Tumblr and Blogger.
Wikis.
A wiki is “a collective website where any participant is allowed to modify any page or create a new page using her Web browser” (Dewing 2010).
Anyone can add and edit what has already been published. One well known example is Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia that makes use of wiki technology.
Social bookmarking.
Bookmarking sites allow users to organize and share links to websites. This enables users to produce a searchable personalized internet. Examples include reddit, Stumble
Upon and Digg.
Social Media Sites
In recent time, the world has witnessed what could be referred to as communication revolution through ‘technological advances and increased use of the Internet’ (Moqbel, 2012). This communication revolution, as well as the more technologically empowered lifestyle of individual users, has changed the way people communicate and connect with each other (Coyle, 2008; O’Murchu, Breslin & Decker, 2004). Social networking sites are a recent trend in this revolution (Moqbel, 2012).
Social networking sites therefore, are web-based services that allow individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system, (Boyd and Ellison, 2007).
Social networking sites are created to take care of variety of human needs and could be classified using that format. For instance, Ellison, Steinfield, and Lampe (2007:143) classified SNSs into: work-related contexts (LinkedIn.com), romantic relationship initiation (Friendster.com), connecting those with shared interests such as music or politics (MySpace.com), or the college student population (Facebook). It should however be noted that the examples mentioned above were based on the original intentions of founders of the SNSs, though these intentions have been taken to another level by users.
This is why latter classification of SNSs takes somewhat different approach and put different factors into consideration. To Fraser and Dutta (2008), SNSs should better be classified into the following five categories- egocentric/identity construction social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace; opportunistic social networking sites for business connections such as LinkedIn; community social networking sites representing cultural or neighborhood groups; media-sharing social networking sites such as YouTube and Flickr; and Passion-centric social networking sites for sharing common interests such as Dogster.
Social networking sites came on board in the mid 1990s. One of the first social networking sites was Classmates, a site initiated in 1995 (Rooksby, 2009). The uniqueness of social networking sites is that they not only allow individuals to meet strangers but enables users to discuss and make visible their social networks. This results into connections between individuals which otherwise is not possible through any other media already existing. Maximum time is often used on social networking sites to communicate with people who are already friends or acquaintances in the social network, sharing same mindset or same interests and views (Raj Jain, Gupta & Anand, 2012).
While SNSs have implemented a wide variety of technical features, their backbone consists of visible profiles that display an articulated list of friends who are also users of the system. Profiles are unique pages where one can type oneself into being. After joining an SNS, an individual is asked to fill out forms containing a series of questions. The profile is generated using the answers to these questions, which typically include descriptors such as age, location, interests, etc. Most sites also encourage users to upload a profile photo. Some sites allow users to enhance their profiles by adding multimedia content or modifying their profile's look and feel. Others, such as Facebook, allow users to add modules that enhance their profile. Structural variations around visibility and access are one of the primary ways that SNSs differentiate themselves from each other.
The public display of connections is a crucial component of SNSs. The friends list contains links to each friend's profile, enabling viewers to traverse the network graph by clicking through them. On most sites, the list of friends is visible to anyone who is permitted to view the profile, although there are exceptions. Most SNSs also provide a mechanism for users to leave messages on their friends' profiles. This feature typically involves leaving comments, although sites employ various labels for this feature. In addition, SNSs often have a private messaging feature similar to webmail. While both private messages and comments are popular on most of the major SNSs, they are not universally available.
The background of today's social networking sites according to Boyd & Ellison (2008:214) cited in Roblyer, McDaniel, Webb, Herman, and Witty (2010), began in 1997 with the launch of SixDegrees.com which “allowed users to create a profile list of their friends and in 1998, surf the friends list”. Social networking is as old as humans have been around. Just as in nearly every other species, humans have an instinctual need to be communicated with, and share thoughts, ideas, and feelings about their daily lives. Only the tools with which we communicate have changed over the Millennia (Safko, 2010:5). Social media make it possible to share such information like photos, videos, audio files, and comments. These sites seem to be gaining such high popularity among users. This point was aptly emphasized by Stefanone, Lackaff, and Rosen (2010) when they affirmed that explosion in popularity of social networking sites (SNSs) represents one of the fastest uptakes of communication technology since the web was developed in the early 1990s. Even though the list is endless, some examples of these SNSs include Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, 2go, YouTube, MySpace, BB messenger, LinkedIn, WhatsApp and Wikis just to mention but a few. Some of these forms of social networking sites are further discussed below.
Facebook is a social networking device that enable users interact through conversations, and build relationships by networking with other users. Facebook groups are created as part of a smaller community within the social networking site and focus on particular interests or beliefs about certain issues (Graybill-Leonard, Meyers, Doerfert & Irlbeck 2011). As of January 2008, Facebook has more than 64 million users, and since January 2007 has had an average of 250,000 new registrations per day. It has 65 billion page views per month, and more than 14 million photos are uploaded to its site daily (Gane, & Beer 2008). A more vivid picture of this growth was painted by Kaplan and Haenlein (2009) when they affirmed that:
By January 2009, Facebook had registered more than 175 million active users. To put that number in perspective, this is only slightly less than the population of Brazil (190 million) and over twice the population of Germany (80 million). At the same time, every minute, 10 hours of content were uploaded to the video sharing platform YouTube. And, the image hosting site Flickr provided access to over 3 billion photographs, making the world-famous Louvre Museum’s collection of 300,000 objects seem tiny in comparison.
Safko (2010:8) identified Facebook as being by far the most popular and widely used social network. By the end of 2013, Facebook boasted 1.23 billion monthly active users worldwide, adding 170 million in just one year. According to Facebook, 757 million users logon to Facebook daily as of 31 December, 2013.
The use of mobile phones especially smart phones and the internet have made it possible for people to communicate and respond to just about any issue in their environment. This is in line with Hill (2010) assertion that the proliferation of mobile digital media and communications technology appears to have partially democratized image-making and media creation.
LinkedIn is an online professional contact database that was founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003. The site allows its members to create a profile and network with the other over 55 million LinkedIn members from over 150 industries. LinkedIn was established by former PayPal vice president, Reid Hoffman. Brown (2010) asserts that with over 55 million registered users throughout the world, LinkedIn is considered a premier business networking site.
Like many other social and professional networks, LinkedIn has searchable groups wherein a member can create a group about a particular topic and other members can join the group to discuss a common interest or industry, hobby, college, religion, or political viewpoint. LinkedIn Groups are similar to forums.
WhatsApp has become one of the very popular social networking applications, especially patronized by students in this part of the world. WhatsApp was founded in 2009 by Brian Acton and Jan Koum, both veterans of Yahoo!, and is based in Santa Clara, California (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp).
WhatsApp Messenger is a cross-platform mobile messaging application which allows you to exchange messages without having to pay for SMS. WhatsApp Messenger is available for iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Phone, Android and Nokia. Other than simple text, it also enables images, audios or videos to be shared instantaneously. As 3G and Wi-Fi technologies are gaining popularity all around the world, and more and more people are replacing their cellular phones with smart phones, the number of WhatsApp users is growing. Its cross-platform feature also enables people to exchange messages between different brands of smart phones. In addition to the basic text messaging functionality, it also supports multimedia messages, which enriches the context of the messages. More importantly, it connects to the server via the Internet, and only requires the user to have a data plan for the 3G services or to have access to Wi-Fi coverage.
However, a major privacy and security issue has been the subject of concern for WhatsApp. Corey (2011) submits that “the primary concern was that WhatsApp required users to upload their entire mobile phone's address book to WhatsApp servers so that WhatsApp could discover who, among the users' existing contacts, is available via WhatsApp”. While this is a fast and convenient way to quickly find and connect the user with contacts who are also using WhatsApp, it means that their address book was then mirrored on the WhatsApp servers, including contact information for contacts who are not using WhatsApp.
Nonetheless, WhatsApp provides two options for users who wish to save their chat history: creating a backup of it or exporting it as a text file that can be sent over email (Larrien, & Eric, 2012). According to Kim (2012), WhatsApp has crossed the 10 billion text messages sent milestone since launching in June 2009” and Murphy, (2013) adds that it has further exploded over the last year with over 7 billion inbound messages a day as of January 2013. It has more than 10 million downloads on Android with 369, 270 user reviews, and it is used in about 195 countries on 750 networks.
Twitter is one of the most used social media platform for news tweet. Broersma and Graham (2012), comment that since its launch in July 2006, Twitter has quickly become popular. The social networking service allows its users to post 140 character long messages (tweets) to be distributed to users’. Its subscribers (followers) grew to 190 million users per month in June 2010 with 65 million tweets posted per day. As the number of users is rising, that is also how the various potentials of social media are being sold to other unaware members of the public.
Brown (2010) observed that tweets can be responded to in several ways. You can send a reply that can be seen publicly, you can reply privately with a direct message, or you can forward a message to others using the re-tweet feature so that others can view your posts. You can also use Twitter to talk about anything – from what you had for lunch to the government’s latest budget cuts. The illustration below best presents the opportunities Twitter offers its subscribers.
The nodes represent media sources and links represent co-subscription relationships. The node size is scaled to represent the log of audience share and its colour represents topical categories (Jisun, Cha, Gummadiz, & Crowcroft, 2011). It is a common experience today to see people going to social media sites such as Twitter to get updates on current events and read other peoples’ reactions to events in the news.
To buttress the importance of Twitter to news organizations and news dissemination in mainstream journalism, Broersman and Graham (2012), observed that news organizations have begun to harness the potentials of Twitter as a tool for reaching out to audience. They opine that they use it in four particular ways: to disseminate news, to market stories, to establish relationships with news consumers, and as a tool for reporting. In recent years, breaking news like the terrorist attacks in Mumbai (November 2008), the crash of a US Airways plane in the Hudson River (January 2009) and the revolutions in Moldavia and Middle East (2009 - 2011) have been distributed through Twitter.
SOCIAL MEDIA AS A TOOL OF COMMUNICATION
Social media offers a variety of avenues through which we can communicate with people. In fact, social media is known to have been used widely in educational field also. Over the last 30 years the nature of communication has undergone a substantial change and it is still changing. Email has had a profound effect on the way people keep in touch. Communications are shorter and more frequent than when letters were the norm and response time has greatly diminished. Instant messaging has created another method of interaction, one where the length of messages is shorter and the style of the interaction is more conversational. Broadcast technologies like Twitter transform these short bursts of communication from one-on-one conversations to little news (or trivia) programs : which we can ‗tune in‘ whenever we want an update or have something to say. Online communication tools also have the potential to increase our awareness of the movements of our professional or social contacts. Twitter, for instance, offers us an update of things people we know happen to be doing at a particular point of time. This phenomenon has been referred as social proprioception by Clive Thompson (2007), named after the physical quality of proprioception that tells a creature where its extremities are by the reception of stimuli produced within the organism. Social proprioception tells us where the nodes of our community are and provides a sense of connectedness to and awareness of others without direct communication. Internet is the third place where people connect with friends, build a sense of togetherness. Increasingly, a computer with an Internet connection is the locus of a range of interactions in a variety of media and a gateway to an array of social spaces for work and play. Social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace and virtual environments like Second Life and World of Warcraft have become online meeting spaces where users— members, residents, or players—can interact and express themselves. They offer a way to keep in touch with existing communities that users belong to offline, such as social and professional groups. They also make it possible for people who would not normally communicate more than a few times a year to keep in touch— colleagues met at conferences, for instance, or friends met through the online community itself. Sites like YouTube and Flickr represent another forum for online communication that is centered on sharing, preference, and popular culture. Visitors can browse movies (in the case of YouTube) or photos (in the case of Flickr), express personal preferences, add commentary, and upload their own creative work. YouTube is also a repository of popular culture in the form of newscasts, television shows, movies, or music videos that are of current interest. The kinds of interaction that occur on these sites center around shared interests and include not only verbal commentary, but commentary in the form of original or derivative works based on popular pieces. One of the reasons people prefer such form of media is because of the interactions they can have there, both social and professional. Whether it is as simple as checking back to see what other comments have been added to yours or as involved as attending a workshop or presentation in a virtual world, the nature of the attraction lies in the connections between people that these online spaces afford.
SOCIAL MEDIA: ONLINE SOCIAL NETWORKING
Application or mode of communication is enabled by the prevalence of Web 2.0 technology at the end of year 2004. The previous Web 1.0 consists of static pages and offer little interactivity. However, this is different from Web 2.0 or Web "read/write" which refers to the development of online community-centered application based on the degree of interactivity, inclusiveness, collaborative, authentic materials, and digital literacy skills which are higher . With technological advances from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0, new media is changing and growing. According to O'Reilley, Web 2.0 refers to the second generation of web development and is often associated with social media applications. The important feature of this media is the development of software that enabled mass participation in social and collective activities [8] that can often be seen as “playful”. Web 2.0 helps the user to overcome the technical obstacles that hinder the way earlier and thus making the Internet an instrument for and by the mass user. One can easily consume (read, listen, watch, download, search, and buy), create (personalize, aggregate, and contribute), share (publish, upload), facilitate (tag, recommend) and communicate (send messages, post comments, rate, and chat) online. The new media technology evolved to meet the technical requirements for creating an effective online social networking, namely (i) bounding: to form an online group meeting, (ii) tracking: the list of community involvement in discussions, (iii) archiving: to maintain records for easy discussion, and (iv) warranting: ensuring the identity of the participants [9]. This social media where individuals can meet and chat with others who share their same interests have sprouted rapidly and have become a very popular application of the Internet. The rapid adaptation of this technology by individuals, groups, organizations, and communities have created "online communities”, and "virtual social life" [10]. This media is created with four basic elements based on Preece [11], namely people, sharing purposes, policy, and computer system. This community is formed and maintained through the Internet. According to Horigan [12], “…an online community has become a ‘third place’ for the public and it is different from home and workplace.” Among the main activity of this “third place” is conversation and the mood is established as “playful”, “frivolity, verbal wordplay, and wit”, and by the feeling of “human warmth” deriving from “being apart together” [13].
This media is changing all the time, therefore, it appears in various forms or applications such as discussion / Internet forums, weblogs, wikis (like Wikipedia), photo sharing (Flickr), video sharing (like YouTube), social news (Twitter), social games (YoVille), social networking (such asFacebook, Friendster, Second Life, There). Usage of this social media creates excitement to the user and they are used more often than other media. This is consistent with McQuail’s [5] opinion that one of the characteristics of new media is related to the degree of "playfulness", the degree to which a current or potential user believes that the social network site will bring him/her a sense of enjoyment and pleasure [14]. Cyberspace now becomes a new playground and online interaction where people get together and form groups based on interest with the use of social networking and virtual world sites. Millions are logging in, joining up, and participating. It has become more fun, interactive, and “lives” with elements of video, audio, and digital animation offered by this new media. Higher rates in Internet penetration in almost all countries is due to the increase in online activities. "Digital World, Digital Life" released by TNS Global Interactive shows that the average adult respondents from 16 industrial countries spend one-third of their spare time being online. The use of new media is no longer confined to the home or at work, but can be used anywhere with a wireless technology that can also be used on mobile phones. According to Damien Cummings (www.the-open-room.com), the year 2008 witnessed the growth of online social networking via social networking sites and virtual worlds. Statistics from comScore World Metrix showed that from 1.1 billion users accessing the Internet in May 2009, 734.2 million or 65% of them, visit at least one social networking site. In fact, it has become a social utility in the friend relationship management with 74% of consumers using it to send messages to their friends. These sites connect people globally and Universal McCann’s research has shown that more immigrants such as Filipinos (83%), Hungarians (80%), Polish (77%), and Mexicans (76%) use this social media.
SOCIAL MEDIA IN ENHANCING SOCIAL INTERACTION
The more social media we have, the more we think we're connecting, yet we are really disconnecting from each other” JR.(n.d.). social networking has influenced a lot of us during the past years and while it does have its benefits nothing in this world is perfect. Thus, due to the rapid expansion of technological ingenuity and the useful applications of it in daily life, many bright individuals fear that the excessive use of social networks might entrench people in this virtual world and make them instead absent from the real world. Social media is rampant yet its malicious effects are unbeknownst to us. Human interactions which is the basis of how humans thrived is degraded and in some cases severely warped to the point where simple tasks that require teamwork and communication are nigh impossible. Human interactions and face to face communication is at an all-time low thanks to social media being the preferred medium of interpersonal interactions replacing the valuable face to face interactions which help form human relationships, build teamwork and social skills.
Studies have shown the technologies impact on social interactions since the rise of cellphones and social media. As Emily Drago of Elon university wrote in 2014” Little by little, technology has become an integral part of the way that people communicate with one another and has increasingly taken the place of face-to-face communication” (Drago 2014).
Twitter is an American microblogging and social networking service on which users post and interact with messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and retweet tweets, but unregistered users can only read them. Users access Twitter through its website interface or its mobile-device application software ("app"), though the service could also be accessed via SMS before April 2020.The service is provided by Twitter, Inc., a corporation based in San Francisco, California, and has more than 25 offices around the world. Tweets were originally restricted to 140 characters, but the limit was doubled to 280 for non-CJK languages in November 2017.Audio and video tweets remain limited to 140 seconds for most accounts (D'Monte, Leslie2009).
Twitter was created by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in March 2006 and launched in July of that year. By 2012, more than 100 million users posted 340 million tweets a day,and the service handled an average of 1.6 billion search queries per day.In 2013, it was one of the ten most-visited websites and has been described as "the SMS of the Internet". As of Q1 2019, Twitter had more than 330 million monthly active users.Twitter is a some-to-many microblogging service, given that the vast majority of tweets are written by a small minority of users( twitter search team 2011).
In April 2014, Twitter underwent a redesign that made the site resemble Facebook somewhat. On June 4, 2014, Twitter announced that it would acquire Namo Media, a technology firm specializing in "native advertising" for mobile devices. On June 19, 2014, Twitter announced that it had reached an undisclosed deal to buy SnappyTV, a service that helps edit and share video from television broadcasts.The company was helping broadcasters and rights holders to share video content both organically across social and via Twitter's Amplify program.In July 2014, Twitter announced that it intended to buy a young company called CardSpring for an undisclosed sum. CardSpring enabled retailers to offer online shoppers coupons that they could automatically sync to their credit cards in order to receive discounts when they shopped in physical stores. On July 31, 2014, Twitter announced that it had acquired a small password-security startup called Mitro. On October 29, 2014, Twitter announced a new partnership with IBM. The partnership was intended to help businesses use Twitter data to understand their customers, businesses and other trends.
On February 11, 2015, Twitter announced that it had acquired Niche, an advertising network for social media stars, founded by Rob Fishman and Darren Lachtman. The acquisition price was reportedly $50 million. On March 13, 2015, Twitter announced its acquisition of Periscope, an app that allows live streaming of video. In April 2015, the Twitter.com desktop homepage changed.
Social Communication In The Twitter Era
The desire to comprehend Twitter and its role in media, politics and the wider society is often reduced to a swift and dismissive analysis, somewhat reflective of the brevity of the platform itself. Thus, Twitter is an echo chamber, a natural habitat for the narcissists; it is highly disposable, yet also revolutionary, democratising and disruptive of the existing social order. Taken-for-granted assumptions about the role and potential of evolving communications technologies are nothing new. It falls to authors like Murthy to provide sober and convincing scrutiny based on well-considered and clearly argued analysis. Murthy began this work with the first edition in 2013. The fact that a revised edition emerges after five years speaks to the rapid and mutable nature of the subject-matter and the need to revisit and update the questions and themes which have been in flux in the meantime. What is achieved here – for the second time – is an expedition through complexity to a destination of considerable clarity. Murthy begins with an argument that far from signalling the end of meaningful communication, Twitter at its core has the potential to facilitate considerable insight to increase our awareness of others and ‘to augment our spheres of knowledge, tapping us into a global network of individuals … giving us instant updates on topics and areas in which they are knowledgeable or participating in real time’ (p. xii). It therefore has pro-found social consequences. The remainder of the book considers the mechanics, trajectories and implications of this activity and these consequences. The author adopts the vantage point that Twitter is unique among social media in both its default publicness and relative ease of access, yet he also attends to instances of exclusion and digital division among users. The exemplars used bring us from familiar events in the public sphere – the so-called Arab Spring, Occupy and the Black Lives Matter movement – to the influence of and controversies surrounding the likes of Stephen Fry, Kim Kardashian and, of course, @RealDonaldTrump. Enmeshed in these considerations, with the inescapable acknowledgement that celebrities exert disproportionate influence in the arena, is a constant regard for the stances and strategies of ‘everyday people’ and the distinctive presence of the mundane alongside the monumental that has come to characterise Twitter.
Murthy’s success here primarily emanates from his debunking of technological deter-ministic summations of Twitter and his privileging of human agency over structures and systems. The book is, therefore, a highly useful companion as we all try to make sense of the relationships and interplays between forms of contemporary communication and social and political shifts. A qualitative analysis is the primary methodology employed. The stance and preoccupations are very clearly grounded in sociology; its key thinkers are effectively name checked. What is particularly impressive, however, is the scope and depth that is achieved by Murthy, in contrast to other literature from commentators locked rigidly into their own discipline. He manages to see both the wood and the trees, and succeeds in producing a compelling and thought-provoking read overall.The book is structured to guide the reader logically through a technical analysis of how Twitter functions, assuming no prior knowledge, thus making it infinitely accessi-ble. Next, he does a convincing job of placing Twitter within a historical context that spans across 300 years of communication within the public sphere. This analysis serves to debunk, with apparent ease, claims that Twitter is a ‘game changing’ or revolutionary platform. He introduces highly pertinent theoretical perspectives, primarily from Heidegger and Goffman, and establishes a position for the work within the broader social sciences canon. These are effective, but it is nonetheless one of my minor criticisms of the book that these theorists are not revisited more explicitly in the later chapters or in the conclusion of the work. Murthy then moves to the substantive examination of the Twittiverse, taking us through sometimes well-rehearsed topics with fresh perspective: he considers journal-ism, natural disasters, political activism, health matters, and finally celebrities and personal branding. He states that although a relatively young communications medium,Twitter has shaped many aspects of our social, political and economic lives … a nuanced approach to understanding Twitter reveals that it is part of a larger historical trend towards update culture, social norms that encourage us to share more in the public sphere. (p. 192)His analysis of update culture and how this impacts on all aspects of our collective worldview is a particular strength and a key contribution of the work – it clearly has a wider sociological application.Considerable attention is paid to the news mediascape. Murthy provides an excellent elaboration of the workings and function of ‘ambient’ news and gives incisive consideration to the role of Twitter in professional and citizen journalism, but he neglects the important matter of agenda setting. His prising apart of public/private dualities and boundaries is a constant throughout the work, and it is effectively handled. However, a consideration of concepts from Warner’s (2002) treaty on publics and counter publics might have augmented this analysis, particularly with regard to political and social activism. Similarly, there is an obvious omission of ‘elite theory’ in coming to grips with matters of celebrity and branding. Its inclusion would have assisted us in considering questions of power inequality and digital divides more thoroughly. What is well set out is an analysis of the tension between the often individualised and self-involved nature of Twitter use versus its potential as a tool for building social capital, engagement and cohesion. Murthy is praiseworthy for his ability to remain impartial and nuanced throughout, never straying into the polemical terrain where many commentators find themselves. The book has a potentially wide readership, ranging from social scientists and media scholars to anyone with an interest in the medium of Twitter as it effects cultural shifts more broadly.Towards the end of the book Murthy reasserts the argument he began with: ‘Twitter maintains a unique position in contemporary social, political and economic life. The combination of the medium’s brevity and simplicity and mass diffusion has brought together a set of characteristics that has made it attractive’ (p. 199). This by now is beyond question, and in this work the author has offered a strong and effective elaboration. He concludes by pointing to matters beyond the immediate scope of this book, yet fundamentally important to the future scrutiny of Twitter. Twitter’s policy that ‘tweets must flow’ – a sort of anti-censorship banner, based on established American notions of free speech at all costs – has been at odds with cultures and, indeed, regimes elsewhere in the world. Murthy earmarks this as an area to continue to monitor in the evolution of the platform at its points of intersection with existing power structures.
USERS’ PARTICIPATION AND SOCIAL INFLUENCE DURING INFORMATION SPREADING ON TWITTER
In recent years, the impact of online social networks and their rapid growth have changed the patterns of human interaction and information dissemination among population in modern society. Twitter is a popular tool to quickly post and exchange text messages limited by 140 characters. In 2012, over 100 million users posted 340 million tweets on an average day [1, 2]. This platform represents a wide variety of communications, going from personal to those coming from traditional mass media, being suitable for conducting computational or social science analysis [3–5].
Most recent studies based on Twitter focused on the topology structures of user relationships [1, 6, 7], information trends [8], and community interactions [9–11]. Some authors conducted analysis to study the models of information spreading, prediction of social relations or collective attention, and the keys to propagating information on online social networks [12–18]. In studying these generative and analytical models, the microscopic dynamics has attracted many researchers, who focused on the patterns and characteristics of online human behaviors by empirical analysis [19–22].
However, all messages on Twitter may be identified using keywords called hashtags [23]. This mechanism generates the trending topics, and people use them to discuss and exchange ideas without the necessity of having any explicit relation. This means that the amount of messages that users can read is not related to the amount of the accounts that they subscribed. This also implies that the models based on cascades evolution or propagation path are not accurate and reasonable to explain the efforts of individuals to get their information spreading [24–27].
Meanwhile, the attraction or popularity of the content is an important factor that characterizes the influence of a node. According to different emphases of research task, the recent researches of information spreading can be summarized as the information-centric researches and user-centric researches [28].
TWITTER AND MASS PARTICIPATION ON SOCIAL POLICTICAL COMMUNICATION
According to Lattimore (2010), social media is an umbrella which covers all media that uses technology in creating open collaboration, interaction and participation where the users have the opportunities to share experiences, ideas and opinions in the form of visual material or words.The key to social media is the presence of a collaborative, credible, atmosphere of information sharing among the audience. Therefore, social media such as twitter depends on its audience in constructing the same meaning by using technology as a tool. Twitter has been integrated by politicians as a paramount tool to strategize communication and intensely apply the strategies during campaigns of election(Lopez-Meri, Marcos-Garcia & Casero-Ripolles, 2017). It is well-acknowledged during a political campaign that the image or personality of the candidate has taken precedence over job issue or qualification in the evaluation of the politicians by the public (Lee, 2013). Twitter as a platform is distinctive due to its collaborative nature, story-changing and story-evolving environment which leads to a more interactive agenda setting for the candidate and the followers. Gokce, Hatipoglu, Gokturk, Luetgert & Saygin (2014) disclosed that twitter is good for a well-formed story with a verified sources on a very quick notice which is quite difficult conventional media platforms such as newspaper and TV channel. Twitter is focused on due to its unique character and userfriendly interface to explore electoral context. The only challenge is the possibility of contributing to public discourse in such a condensed form but its efficiency and appropriateness are strategic tools for political candidates and parties in their attempt to mobilize support and target voters. Gasser and Gerlach (2012) reported that tweets and re-tweets in many countries are already distinctive features of political discourse and are followed intensively by lobbyists, politicians and journalists. However, there is need for further attention on the perception of the strategic role of twitter in communication of a political candidate (Grusell & Nord, 2012). Furthermore, twitter is considered to be the third largest social networking site (Barnett, 2011; Boland, 2013). The microblogging platforms only allow users to read and post messages (called tweets) of 140 characters or less. Users can “follow” or subscribe to the twitter feeds of other users, re-tweet (or share posts) and get followers of their own (Boland, 2013). Twitter for instance, can be used as a means of disseminating information to all people both known and unknown without necessarily hoping to get a reply or response from readers. Twitter has become a popular medium for channelling information and it is being used widely by individuals, organizations and politicians due to its widespread adoption. However, managing and maintaining social networks effectively can be used as a political communication tools to gain a supports from the peoples in the case of politician. Makice(2009) has concluded to five main functions of twitter:1) Daily Chatter Discussing regarding daily activities and routines; 2) Chat with the "@" for twitter others account, specific talk to others, on a user basis; 3) Share information or messages with other users; 4) Report the news; 5) Report the developments of certain issues to other users. While, Solis, (2011) suggests 4C with a community approach, namely:
- Content is the content of an ideal message to attract the public's interest in forming a community.
- Context means to understand the characteristics of the audience in order to convey the appropriate message.
- Connectivity is designing experiences that support interaction.
- Continuity is providing continuous, valuable and consistent interaction with the audience. From the past literature, influencers twitter content can be divided to 4 major elements i.e. News Sharing; Context of Message, Quality of Communication, and daily Activities Updates as discussed in the following sections:
News Sharing
According to Gainous and Wagner (2014), political actors are allowed through the social media to autonomously produce and share messages to people directly (Adamu, Mohamad & Rahman, 2016). Thus, their own issues can be created and framed. In this manner, new spaces and new opportunities politicalwill be provided for political communication and spaces that the party candidate exploits (Aalberg et al., 2017). Digital platform broadens the sharing potential by politicians as they can influence media agenda and achieve significant social effect through creation and distribution of message through Facebook, Twitter or YouTube (Mazzoleni, 2014). Bandung Mayor is an example of this as the politician has managed to access mainstream media with its discourse and proposal through an innovative dynamic of two-way street mediatisation of politics (Casero-Ripolles, Feenstra & Tormey, 2016). Enli (2017) added that twitterhas agenda-setting influence with powerful platform for participating and sharing of public agenda especially for the agents that recently arrive at or to the margins of a political system. The use of news sharing in that sense has been successful (Casero-Ripolles, Feenstra & Torney, 2016). Political candidates are provided the opportunity to autonomously determine their own communicative strategy on the digital landscape and then relay their narratives and discourse both of which are basic components of political actions (Casero-Ripolles, Sintes-Olivella & Franch, 2017). From today’s rapid sharing of messages on social media platforms like in the case of Twitter, researchers from various discipline have examined the sites and the challenges it poses generally in a society, civic engagement, political participation, psychological well-being and interpersonal relationships (Caers et al., 2013; Wilson, Gosling & Graham, 2012; Zhang & Leung, 2015). Furthermore, Mitchell and Page (2014) stated that twitter recently hasturned out to be an active part of online distribution and consumption of news. Twitter as a platform simplifies and facilitates news sharing due to its easy-to-use tools and convenient tools for posting content – for individuals, organization and politicians. This can be done for average user of twitter using the “share” buttons provided on the news sites “retweet” from the follower to improve their visibility, reputation and initiative that have been executed. The news sharing done by leaders comprises distribution of a special kind of content instead of describing a general social media activity that involves political activities, opinions, reflection on national issues or a discourse on someone’s feeling (Bakar, Halim, Mustaffa & Mohamad, 2016). Therefore, news sharing is defined as the practices of providing for a specific set of people an access to news contents through social media platform by recommending or posting it. Generally, news sharing on twitter is an activity that is recognized by researchers from varieties of discipline like any other social media. In most cases, studies from computer or information science focus on how the processed news sharing can be applied to predict or model information cascades, adoption rates, social scientist focus and popularity on the effect of sharing news individually (psychology), purpose of engaging in news sharing (communication study) or its effect on political participations.
Context of Message
New opportunities and challenges have been posed by the conventional media such as the text messages found on Twitter(Elsner et al., 2009). One of those challenges is that user’s message is always short; for that reason, users are capable to assemble the required context over the course of conversations. The implication of this is that reassembling of individual messages into complete conversation makes it easier for any task that would have been performed on conversational media(Shen et al., 2006). Another way to think of this is to see it as clustering problem; thus, the message can be partitioned into set of disjoint clusters where each cluster stands for a conversation on a topic among a set of participants. This formation raised the question on how a similarity measure should be designed. The techniques are basically and solely on lexical overlaps since the messages are always too brief to be meaningful. A single message may not deliver much about the topic without considering what has been previously mentioned and how it was been said. Recently, many methods have been introduced to detect conversational threads in dynamic text stream (Wang et al., 2008). Although both lexical and non-lexical information are used such as name and time mentions in the message for this task, the social and temporal contexts have been ignored which provide valuable hints for the message interpretation. To certain degree, the contexts of the message is exploited through correlation clustering employed in a two-step way but the performance is limited largely by the classifier used in the first step which message similarity is computed without social and temporal context of each message being considered. The style of political communication can be broken down into two aspects: the content and the form. These are the two aspects that interact and influence effect to the point that style leads to content while content generates style (Moffitt & Tormey, 2014; Wodak, 2015). A political communication style is therefore proposed based on what is being said and how it is being said. The context of the message is considered as the way political actors present their political performances with an awareness of how the two aspects i.e. content and form are integrated into communication style.
Quality of Communication
Users are allowed on social media to broadcast their social networks to other users (Donath & Boyd, 2004). In that manner, users can make evaluations and impressions about perceived communication characteristics of a source by examining the social network of the source such as attractiveness, competence and credibility. Additionally, evaluation of message quality and sources becomes increasingly important for audiences because users of social media create their own contents. Many factors related to the medium in a social media network are used to form such evaluation and perception (Flanagin & Medders, 2010; Spence, Lachlan, Spates & Lin, 2013). Several past studies have investigated communication quality as related to Twitter. According to Zhao and Rosson (2009), source credibility is one of the most significant criteria used to determine the merit or quality of tweeted news. In addition, users are reported to form evaluation and perception of a credibility of a target in accordance with hints provided on Twitter (Westerman, Spence & Van Der Heide, 2012). Also, the perception of credibility is influenced by the speed of updating; Westerman, Spence and Van Der Heide (2014) posited that fast update leads to increased credibility and perception and relationship between information seeking and update speed is mediated by cognitive elaboration. In another vein, the relationship between indicators of twitters and credibility is investigated by Edwards, Spence, Gentile, Edwards and Edwards (2013). The study showed that the perception of the user’s credibility is impacted by systemgenerated cue of Twitter users’ Klout score (the total effect on the social network). Also, Morris, Counts, Roseway, Hoff and Schwarz (2012) found that perception of tweet credibility of a twitter user and author’s credibility is affected by heuristic cues such as links that lead to credible sites, number of retweets, reputation, user name, topical expertise, number of followers, other tweets with similar information. Ha and Ahn (2011) on quality of information show that the self-efficacy, the argument quality, source credibility perception of a user and the information usefulness have influence on the intention to retweet a message. However, these studies underscore the perception that Twitter is a primary source of information for many users and it is explored in different circumstances. Yet, there are less or few studies on how the identity of the Twitter sources can affect the perception of communication quality (Mohamad, Ismail & Bidin, 2017). Similarly, Barbera, Jost, Nagler, Tucker & Bonneau (2015) stated that the variety and quantity of political information has been expanded due to the spread of internet usage where the citizen have access and unprecedented opportunities are created for communicating with peers about present trending events. Several studies on the relationship between group diversity and decision-making quality have often been taken to posit that transformations in technology should contribute to a pluralistic and robust form of public debate (Hong & Page, 2004; Mutz, 2006). Great access to information may result to selective exposure and ideological congenial content leading to an environment of “echo chamber” that could promote political polarization and social extremism (Adamic & Glance, 2005; Iyengar & Haln, 2009). However, the existing views are reinforced to the extent that an individual tens to trust more on quality communication than the quality of the information (Bracciale & Martella, 2017). Perception of political communication may be over flogged for partisan or other reasons by the same token (Van Boven, Judd & Sherman, 2012; Westfall, Van Boven, Chambers & Judd, 2015).
Daily Activities Updates
Twitter status is the activity where brief text updates are broadcast by users about things happening in their daily work or life activities such as what they are experiencing, reading or thinking (Kleinberg, 1999). Twitter can be explored to achieve variety of social objectives and is now gaining popularity option for online social networking especially for politicians. On Twitter.com, politician updates daily life events of their constituents, communities; share opinions, information and news and seek expertise and knowledge with interested observers in public tweets (Kleinberg, 1999; Girvan & Newman, 2001). In order to achieve a level of cyberspace presence, people seem to use micro-blogging being “out there” and to have another layer of connection with the followers and the world (Kleinberg, 1999). The increase in popular use for micro-blogging for lightweight communication in the world of social computing makes it easy for political leadersto have informal communication with their constituencies. Daily information or communication via twitter promotes feeling of liking other virtual persons. It leads to virtual feeling of proximity, although it may not increase the physical proximity with others who are not in daily life or work activities contacts (Liben-Nowell, Novak, Kumar, Raghavan & Tomkins, 2005). Keeping up with the followers increases the possibilities of sharing political updates and activities and may raise the chances of discovering the same attitudes and experience (such as similar reactions to present events and places both have visited). Twitter as a social medium is used daily by politician as a tool of election campaign;the party or party leaders would have introduced as a new form of communication channel with considerable interactive possibilities (Grusell & Nord, 2012). Meanwhile, it is good to know whether this tool is truly used in an interactive or daily manner of communication with voters or just as an additional channel for one-way political message.
CAUSES OF TWITTER OF BAN
On 4th June 2021, the Nigerian government officially put an indefinite ban on Twitter (BBC 2021) restricting it from operating in Nigeria after the social media platform deleted tweets made by the Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari warning the south eastern people of Nigeria, predominantly Igbo people, of a potential repeat of the 1967 Biafran Civil War due the ongoing insurgency in Southeastern Nigeria. The Nigerian government claimed that the deletion of the President's tweets factored into their decision but it was ultimately based on "a litany of problems with the social media platform in Nigeria, where misinformation and fake news spread through it have had real world violent consequences". This ban was done without considerations of over 39 million Twitter users in Nigeria who uses the social media site as a platform to stay informed and updated as well as to voice their opinions including government discontent.
Telecoms operators received instructions from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to effect the suspension of services of micro blogging platform Twitter. The carriers, acting under the aegis of Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), said they conducted assessment of the request according to international best practices hence it was not democratically carried out.
Segun Adeyemi, Special Assistant To The President (Media) in the office of the Minister of Information and Culture, Abuja, claimed in a terse press release that the Minister, Lai Mohammed, attributed the ban to: “The persistent use of the platform for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence”.
Mr Adeyemi stated further that the “Federal Government has also directed the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) to immediately commence the process of licensing all OTT and social media operations in Nigeria.
Taking a cue from the Information and Culture Minister, the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, also threatened that Nigerians who defy the Twitter ban would be prosecuted. The argument advanced in Adeyemi’s press release notwithstanding, Nigerians are not oblivious of the real reason why the rash decision was taken – the taking down of President Muhammadu Buhari’s Twitter handle for tweeting what was interpreted as a threat of genocide or bloody suppression against a section of the Nigerian populace.The president had tweeted: “Many of those misbehaving today are too young to be aware of the destruction and loss of lives that occurred during the Nigerian Civil War. Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand.”
It is common knowledge that social media service providers like Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, among others, have well defined and widely disseminated industry standards that frown at the use of words and expressions that convey hateful messages or thoughts. Thus, with one of his tweets deleted, President Buhari has company in former President of the United States, Donald Trump, who received a similar knock when he repeatedly tweeted venomous messages against American citizens opposed to his indecorous approach to addressing governance and political issues.
Of a poetic irony is the fact that one issue over which the Buhari Administration has repeatedly waxed lyrical is that of hate speech; so much that the National Assembly, controlled by his All Progressives Peoples Congress (APC), has introduced a bill to establish the National Hate Speech Commission and another one to regulate the social media. Both bills have rightly been opposed by Nigerians who feared that they would serve as witch-hunt apparatuses against those who exercise the right of dissent.
EFFECT OF TWITTER BAN ON ONLINE SOCIAL INTERACTION AND INFORMATION DISSEMINATION IN NIGERIA
More than 39 million Nigerians use twitter as a political platform to stay informed and updated and to voice their opinions including government discontent. On June 4, the Nigerian government announced that it had suspended Twitter’s operations in the country. The announcement came two days after the social media company removed a tweet by President Muhammadu Buhari, in which Buhari issued a thinly veiled threat against secessionist groups in the southeast “to treat them in the language they understand.” Since announcing the ban, the government has issued directives to federal prosecutors to arrest anyone still using Twitter and ordered Internet providers to block access to the platform. After some initial confusion as to whether Twitter remained accessible, it appears as of mid-June that most Nigerians can no longer access the platform. The Nigerian government claimed that the deletion of the President's tweets factored into their decision but it was ultimately based on "a litany of problems with the social media platform in Nigeria, where misinformation and fake news spread through it have had real world violent consequences".
Most media channels and station uses twitter to bring information closer to the people in a busy world where their audience have little time to sit in front of television and radio but relies on the internet. Twitter, which has the ability to report a story live, regardless of when the newscast is. A reporter can live-Tweet a story as it is happening, giving news consumers instant access to information without having to wait for the nightly news.With the ban on twitter in Nigeria, this quick access to information dispensed by electronic media via twitter platform will affect citizens’ access to those information but also has a negative effect on those media channels; reducing the traffic drawn to their website and also limit their ability to publish instant news on twitter. Twitter has also become the foremost social media resource centre where disease control agencies of different countries, including Nigeria, share local and international updates with their citizens.
During the #EndSARS protests against police brutality in October 2020 when peaceful protesters were detained by state forces, the Nigerian youth, through Twitter, created hotlines affected persons could reach in order to secure their release or that of their colleagues (premium times 2021).The bird application also drew the attention of the international communities through prompt information to the plight of young Nigerians who had suffered at the hands of law enforcement.
A lawyer and human rights crusader, Inibehe Effiong (premium times 2021), describes Twitter social media platforms as “veritable tools for civic engagement” through enlightening the public on the recent stories and happening event. “It gives the ordinary people a voice to air their grievances and bring to public attention, crisis and injustice that has been done to them and seek both institutional and public support,” the activist says, noting that so many citizens have got redress for injustice done to them “on account of the polarization of such cases on Twitter.” Mr Effiong, who has sued the federal government over the ban, says the ban on micro-blogging site limits “access to (justice)” and in a way, “shrinks the civic space.” “People can no longer organize effectively as they are supposed to,” he said(premium times 2021).
The Executive Director TechHer Nigeria, Chioma Agwuegbo, says Twitter has been instrumental in helping to serve justice to survivors of domestic crisis, sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). “Twitter was instrumental in sensitizing the public on Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) issues, calling the civic societies, NGOs, government and relevant stakeholders to action, seeking justice and social support for survivors, and holding perpetrators accountable.“Indeed, it was a powerful tool for online activism and advocacy for issues of sexual and gender-based violence,” she says (premium times 2021).
In the wake of the COVID-19 lockdown, governors of Nigeria’s 36 states unanimously declared a state of emergency on SGBV after a series of violence perpetrated against women sparked nationwide protests by activists online and at rallies. Reports of rape, abuse, and killing of women and girls flooded the social media space. Notable among the cases were the rape and murder of Vera Uwa Omozuwa and Barakat Bello and the rape of a 12-year-old girl in Jigawa State. These public outcries using hashtags such as #JusticeForUwa, and #JusticeForBarakat helped to sustain the call for justice which led to the declaration of the state of emergency. Several other female survivors of SGBV were encouraged and told their own stories. Ms Agwuegbo said with the ban on Twitter in Nigeria, the progress achieved in using the Twitter platform to get social support and justice may suffer a setback (premium times 2021).
2.2 THEORITICAL FRAMEWORK
Theory of Natural Law
Theory of Natural Law (the autonomous individual) is associated with Hellenistic and Roman periods. The natural law theory is premised on principles of justice and right reasons which are natural, unchangeable and eternal. Natural theory is the most commonly accepted theory of and associated with rights with the substantial work of John Lock who developed the philosophy of humanism and political activity; that people are human beings who are all equal and worthy of basic respects (Hoffman & Rowe,2006; Davis, 2012). The theory simply envisages that humankind was previously living in the state of nature with freedom (rights) to determine self actions, equality, and none was subjected to the whims of the others. But with emergence of some vulnerabilities and hassles which later characterised the state of nature, people got into an agreement (contract) to form a political authority in order to regulate their conducts and also ensure the protection of their natural rights which include life, property, liberty etc. (Dixon & McCoquodale, 2003; Shaw, 2003; Hamid, 2007).
Agenda setting theory
Agenda-setting describes the "ability (of the news media) to influence the importance placed on the topics of the public agenda". The study of agenda-setting describes the way media attempts to influence viewers, and establish a hierarchy of news prevalence.Nations with more political power receive higher media exposure. The agenda-setting by media is driven by the media's bias on things such as politics, economy and culture, etc.The evolution of agenda-setting and laissez-faire components of communication research encouraged a fast pace growth and expansion of these perspectives. Agenda-setting has phases that need to be in a specific order in order for it to succeed.
The history of study of agenda-setting can be traced to the first chapter of Walter Lippmann's 1922 book, Public Opinion.In that chapter, "The World Outside And The Pictures In Our Heads", Lippmann argues that the mass media are the principal connection between events in the world and the images in the minds of the public. Without using the term "agenda-setting", Walter Lippmann was writing about what we today would call "agenda-setting". Following Lippmann's 1922 book, Bernard Cohen observed (in 1963) that the press "may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about. The world will look different to different people," Cohen continues, "depending on the map that is drawn for them by writers, editors, and publishers of the paper they read." As early as the 1960s, Cohen had expressed the idea that later led to formalization of agenda-setting theory by McCombs and Shaw. The stories with the strongest agenda setting influence tend to be those that involve public rancour, conflict, terrorism, crime and drug issues within the nation States.
Therefore, the relevance of the two theories to the discuss explains that social media information about actions taken by a democratic elected government poll strongest attention of the public audience including government of nation states and civic societies hence it will be unconstitutional for the people not to be involved in decision making process and reaching a conclusion without considerations of how those decisions will affect them.
2.3 CHAPTER SUMMARY
In this review the researcher has sampled the opinions and views of several authors and scholars on the concept of social media, twitter as a social media, social communication and twitter ban in Nigeria etc. The works of scholars who conducted empirical studies have been reviewed also. The chapter has made clear the relevant literature.