THE PLACE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE PRACTICE OF PUBLIC RELATIONS IN HIGHER INSTITUTIONS (A CASE STUDY OF ADESEUN OGUNDOYIN POLYTECHNIC, ERUWA)

This study investigated social media and academic performance of the students in Adeseun Ogundoyin Polytechnic, Eruwa. The descriptive survey research design was adopted in the study. A sample of 378 respondents was selected from a population of 24,661 full time undergraduate students in the selected university using confidence interval of 5 and confidence level of 95% (0.05).A simple random sampling technique was used for the selection, where (30) students were randomly selected from five (5) randomly selected faculties in the Adeseun Ogundoyin Polytechnic, Eruwa. A self-developed Likert-type scale titled “Social Media and Academic Performance of Students Questionnaire (SMAAPOS)” thoroughly scrutinized by the project supervisor was used for data collection. The instrument was validated and found to be reliable. It was personally administered by the researcher. The data collected were analyzed with the use of descriptive statistics of frequency count and percentage, and the hypotheses were tested using the inferential statistics of Chi-square (χ²) at 0.05 level of significance. The results obtained showed that, Students’ addictiveness to social network has a significant influence on their academic performance; Student’s exposure to social media network has significant influence on students’ academic performance; Use of social media has significant influence on the academic performance of the students; there is a significant influence on student’s usages of social media network by age.