1

PROJECT PROPOSAL

ON

OCCUPATIONAL FACTORS IN THE
ADOPTION AND USES OF SOCIAL MEDIA
IN NIGERIA
(CASE STUDY OF BANKERS, LAWYERS AND LOCAL
GOVERNMENT WORKERS)

BY

SHODEINDE DAMILARE JOSEPH
124072042

PROJECT SUPERVISOR: MR. WALE AJAYI
2

BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
Recently, numerous commentators have suggested that social media technologiesblogs, wikis,
social networking sites (SNS), micro blogs, or social tagging1 toolsmay facilitate
communication practices in organizations that differ from those associated with traditional
computer mediated communication (CMC) technologies like e-mail, teleconferencing, intranets,
sdecision-support systems, and instant messaging (Grudin, 2006; McAfee, 2006; Steinhuser,
Smolnik, & Hoppe, 2011). The use of social networking sites (SNS), which arrived
commercially about a decade ago, has rapidly gained momentum. By late 2008, MySpace and
Facebook each had 60 million U.S. users and accounted for 6%-8% of all time spent online. As
is often true of digital communication technologies, students are enthusiastic adopters. Whether
or not it enhances academic achievement, it is of value to students, for whom social networking
can vie with studying as their primary occupation.
Use of the internet and social media has grown substantially over the last decade, and the use of
these new web-based technologies for work related activities has been a major part of that. In
2009 a face-to-face survey of 2013 individuals randomly selected from UK households found
that 70 per cent of the population were using the internet, an increase from 59 per cent in 2003,
based on a response rate of 62 per cent. Among employed internet users, 61 per cent made some
use of the internet at work, spending on average seven hours a week online at work (Dutton
Helsper & Gerber 2009). Around 91 per cent of businesses with ten or more employees have
internet access (ONS 2010).
While internet usage has grown, the way people are using the internet has also changed. More
interactive online technology such as blogs, social networking sites such as Twitter and
Facebook and other innovations which are part of greater interactivity and user-generated content
that characterise so-called Web 2.0 i.e. sites allowing users to interact and collaborate with
each other in a social media dialogue have become more prominent. 49 per cent of internet
users engage in social networking online, up from 17 per cent in 2007 (Dutton Helsper & Gerber
2009). Facebook, the most prominent social networking site, is second only to the Google web
search engine in terms of internet traffic according to the Alexa internet rankings (Alexa 2011),
with over 500 million users worldwide and 26 million UK users (BBC 2010). YouTube follows
3

Facebook in terms of traffic and Twitter, a microblogging site begun in 2007, is tenth in the
Alexa rankings, with around 3.7 million users in the UK (Optix 2010).
Fostered by the ubiquitous information technology, social networks such as those facilitated by
Facebook, Twitter, electronic mail, or mobile phone (Dodds et al. 2003, Kleinberg 2008, Eagle et
al. 2009) have attracted increasing attention from both academia and industry that explore how to
leverage such networks for greater business and societal benefits (Domingos and Richardson
2001, Pentland 2008, Chen and Zeng 2009, Weng et al. 2010, Aral et al. 2011). A salient feature
of social networks is the spread of adoption behavior (e.g., adoption of a product, service, or
opinion) from one social entity to another in a social network (Kleinberg 2008). This feature is
central to a wide variety of applications in business (e.g., Domingos and Richardson 2001),
public health (e.g., Chen et al. 2011), and politics (e.g., Carr 2008).
Social media offers organizations the opportunity to engage with customers in new ways.
Enhanced engagement between customers and businesses increases the chances that customers
will become more involved with the company and its brands (Smith & Zook, 2012). Due to its
ability to engage consumers in a timely and direct manner while at relatively low costs, social
media is relevant for organizations of all sizes small, medium and large (Kaplan & Haenlein,
2010). Social media is important because it lets customers communicate with each other and
organizations communicate (two-way) with customers (Smith & Zook, 2012). This type of
digital communication between firms and their audiences has significance in marketing as an
increasing number of consumers desire such connectedness any time and any place (Karaatli, Ma
& Suntornpithug, 2010). Social media is a form of word-of-mouth that amplifies the ability for
communication with large numbers of consumers be it organization to consumers or consumer
to consumers (Mangold & Faulds, 2009; Sago, 2010; Evans, 2012). Usage of social media sites
is significant and increasing.
Social media have transformed corporate communication practices: Tools such as Twitter,
Facebook and Google+ allow organizations to speak directly to and solicit responses from the
public quickly and affordably. But the original intention of these media were to connect friends,
not customers or employees; for businesses, accustomed to managing all aspects of
communications (and muting dissent), social media can be an awkward fit.

4

STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
Despite the increased adoption of social media by various occupations, the implications of these
new technologies for organizational processes are not yet well understood by communication
researchers. Scholars have suggested that social media adoption in organizations is outpacing
empirical understanding of the use of these technologies and our theories about why they may
alter various organizational processes (Raeth, Smolnik, Urbach, & Zimmer, 2009). Because the
implications of social media use in organizations are not well understood.
This project would therefore set to accomplish three primary tasks. First, to explore the emerging
body of research on the use of social media use in organizations. Secondly, to explicate the
distinct ways social media merge with ongoing communicative processes that occur within and
constitute organizations. And, to draw implications for how the use of social media within
organizations may affect particular organizational processes that are of great interest to
communication researchers.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
This project has three main objectives:
i. to explore the existence of many modes of diffusion of the social media
ii. to propose pertinent indicators of their adoption and use
iii. to highlight and explain the perceived ease of use, level of usefulness, frequency of
use and enjoyment derived from using social media across various occupations
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
This research would attempt to answer the following research questions
1. What is the adoption level of the social media services among the various occupations?
2. What is the impact of the knowledge level of specific social media services on their
adoption?
3. What is the relationship between the perceived ease of use of the social media service and
the frequency of use?
5

4. What is the relationship of the enjoyment derived from the social media service and the
frequency of use?
5. What is the relationship of the perceived level of usefulness of social media services and
the frequency of use?

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
It is expected that at the end of this study, to update knowledge within the framework of the
study.
This study would shed more knowledge on the adoption of social networking as It is no doubt
that the use of ICT increases as the day progresses, therefore its significance in passing across
mass messages cannot be over emphasized. This serves as the bedrock of this study, to show how
social media is adopted across various occupations and its uses with the factors considered in the
adoption process. The findings of this study will enable professionals in choosing right media or
tools to use and when to use them.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The survey method is used for the purpose of this research. It involves measuring variables by
asking a sample of the student body questions and then examining relationships among the
variables. This method was chosen because it would easily give an understanding of the position
of the occupational factors in the adoption and uses of social media in Nigeria.
The researcher will make use of simple random sampling to determine the sample size and the
selecting of the elements of sample to whom questionnaire will be administered. The choice of
this sampling technique took into consideration the population size, homogeneity of respondents,
level of accuracy desired and rate of response proposed from the respondents
6

The respondents of this study will be Lecturers, Bankers and Local government workers, who
live and work around Ikorodu. Questionnaires will be administered for this research work. A
sample size of 150 would be drawn from the students and this will constitute the respondents for
this research work.
The measuring instruments that will be used for this research work will be questionnaire and
personal oral interview. The questionnaire has close-ended questions. The close-ended questions
will be used to make study easier for the researcher by making the responses measurable. The
interview on the other hand will be used by the researcher to interact with the interviewees face
to face in other to get in-depth facts from them and also their personal opinions about the study.
The researcher considers it best and appropriate to make use of frequency table presentation and
simple percentages, while simple descriptive analysis will be used to infer meaning from the
data in the table for analysis because the results will be easily understood by both academicians,
and non-academicians. The researcher also understands more the use of percentage than any
other method of analyzing data and also considers it a legitimate way of data analysis.



7

REFERENCES
Abdullah, N., & Gibb, F. (October 2006). A survey of e-book awareness and uasge amongst
students in a academic library. In Proceedings of International Conference of Multidiscipinary
Information Sciences and Technologies, (pp. 25-28).
Bradley, L., & Lee, C.C. (2007). ERP training and user satisfaction: A case study. International
Journal of Enterprise Information Systems, 3(4), 33-50. Brenner, J. (2012). Pew Internet: Social
networking. Retrieved on November 10, 2012 from
http://pewinternet.org/Commentary/2012/March/Pew-Internet-Social-Networking-full-
detail.aspx: Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project.
Burton-Jones, A., & Hubona, C.S. (2005). Individual differences and usage behavior: Revisiting
a technology acceptance model assumption. The DATA BASE for Advances in Information
Systems, 36(2), 58-77.
Chau, P.Y.K. (2001). Influence of computer attitude and self-efficacy on IT usage behavior.
Journal of End User Computing, 13(1), 26-33.
Davis, F.D. (1989). Perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and user acceptance of
information technology. MIS Quarterly, 13(3), 331-340.
Davis, F.D., Bagozzi, R.P., & Warshaw, P.R. (1992). Extrinsic and intrinsic motivation to use
computers in the workplace. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 22(4) 1111-1132.
Evans, D. (2012). Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day, 2nd ed. New York: John Wiley and
Sons. Goh, T. (2011). Exploring gender differences in SMS-based mobile library search systems
adoption. Educational Technologies & Society, 14(4), 192-206.
Hartzel, K. (2003). How self-efficacy and gender issues affect software adoption and use.
Communications of the ACM, 46(9), 167-171.
Kaplan, A.M., & Haenlein, M. (2010). Users of the world, unite!: The challenges and
opportunities of social media. Business Horizons, 53, 59-68.
8

Karaatli, G., Ma, J., & Suntornpithug, N. (2010). Investigating mobile services' impact on
consumer shopping experience and consumer decision-making. International Journal of Mobile
Marketing, 5(2), 75-86.
Kim, B. (2011). Understanding antecedents of continuence intention in social-netowrking
services. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 14(4), 199-205.
Koufaris, M. (2002). Appying the Technology Acceptance Model and flow theory to online
consumer behavior. Information Systems Research. 13(2), 205-223.
Venkatesh V, Morris MG, Davis GB and Davis FD (2003) User acceptance of information
technology: Toward a unified view. MIS Quarterly 27: 425-478.
Vishwanath A and Goldhaber GM (2003) An examination of the factors contributing to adoption
decisions among late-diffused technology products. New Media & Society 5: 547572.
Waters RD, Burnett E, Lamm A and Lucas J (2009) Engaging stakeholders through social
networking: How nonprofit organizations are using Facebook. Public Relations Review 35: 102-
106.
Williams R (2006) Generalized ordered logit/partial proportional odds models for ordinal
dependent variables. The Stata Journal 6(1): 58-82.
Yeon HM, Choi Y and Kiousis S (2007) Interactive communication features on nonprofit
organizations webpages for the practice of excellence in public relations. Journal of Website
Promotion 1: 61-83.
Zhou, Y (2008) Voluntary adopters versus forced adopters: integrating the diffusion of
innovation theory and the technology acceptance model to study intra-organizational adoption.
New Media & Society 10: 475-496.
Zorn TE, Flanagin AJ and Shoham MD (2011) Institutional and non-institutional influences on
information and communication technology adoption and use among nonprofit organizations.
Human Communication Research 37: 1-33.