IMPACT OF EVENT CENTRES ON SOCIAL ACTIVITIES IN NIGERIA CITIES. A RESEARCH PROJECT MATERIAL ON TOURISM AND HOSPITALITY MANAGEMENT
CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
The development of various means of communication continues to emerge as the society develops. Different eras of development in the society, were marked with forms of communication suitable to the period. For instance, earlier forms of communication did not need any technology or skill but as the need to communicate with a wider audience grew, so did the channels, bringing writing and writing forms in its wake. That era introduced theories like the Bullet theory that dwells on the strong, direct effects of the media on people. The theory was based on the “push” model concept of the mass media, where the gatekeepers who decide what the audience will have, simply push the information to the receiver. With the advent of new technologies today, the focus has shifted. The Uses and Gratification Theory has actively displaced the Bullet theory in the sense that people, when they are not seeking out media to subscribe to, can/have become the media themselves. The „audience‟ has moved from being just consumers to producers of their own media. The internet media is based on the “pull” model where receivers pull only the information they want. Tools like blogging, podcasting, video blogging allow the average citizen the ability to pull what is relevant and also participate in producing content. The evolution of the internet provided the technological framework for the emergence of the social media platform. The Internet has been described as a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to serve billions of users worldwide. This extended definition by Omojuwa (2012) captures the essence and function of the internet; It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks, of local to global scope, that are linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries an extensive range of information resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertext documents of the World Wide Web (WWW) and the infrastructure to support email. Most traditional communications media including telephone, music, film, and television are reshaped or redefined by the Internet, giving birth to new services such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and Internet Protocol Television (IPTV). Newsproject, book and other print publishing are adapting to Web site technology, or are reshaped into blogging and web feeds. The Internet has enabled or accelerated new forms of human interactions through instant messaging, internet forums and social networking The new media of communication as the internet is commonly referred to, through the pervasiveness of web 2.0 has broadened and substantially increased public participation in the media. Web 2.0 is a term referring to myriad web applications that provide for interactive information sharing and collaboration via the internet using a variety of means such as texts, images, audio and video (Addison, 2006). The World Wide Web brings the internet into the realm of mass communication and also enables the development of the Social media tools for audience engagement.
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