Role of Social Media in Creating Awareness About the Insecurities in the South East Region

The study examined “Role of Social Media in Creating Awareness about the insecurities in the South East Region”. The specific objectives include to ascertain the extent to which social media create awareness about the insecurity in the selected cities in South East Nigeria, determine the major motivations for using the social media to create awareness about the insecurity in the selected cities in South East Nigeria, evaluate the weaknesses of using the social media in creating awareness about insecurity in the selected cities in South East Nigeria and assess the ethical principles that must be considered by the various social media platforms in allowing users to create awareness about insecurity issues. The research method adopted by the study was the survey research method. The sources of data used were the primary and secondary sources of data. The population of the study was 3,220,000 while the sample size of 400 was determined using the Taro Yamane’s formula. The major instrument of data collection was the questionnaire. The data collected were presented in tables using table, frequencies and percentages. The hypotheses were tested using the chi-square statistical tool. The findings include that social media create awareness about the insecurity in South East Nigeria to a large extent, X2 (4, n = 373) = 327,81, P = 0.05, urgent and wide dissemination of information is a major motivation of using social media in creating awareness about the insecurity in South East Nigeria X2 (4, n = 373) = 222.92, P = 0.05, creating a panicky situation in an incidence of fake news, verification of authenticity of the information network problems and availability of data are the weaknesses of using the social media to create awareness about the insecurity in South East Nigeria X2 (4, n = 373) = 99.39, P = 0.05 and blocking the account of terrorist and criminals using social media platforms is the ethical principle that must be considered by the social media platforms. X2 (4, n = 373) = 166.23, P = 0.05. The researcher recommended that individuals (citizens) should stop spreading, and promoting offensive, abusive, fake news (information), which advances social hatred, and terrorism on social media platforms, people should be at alert to disseminate information that has to do with the security of lives and property, people should verify the authenticity of the information they post on social media and the various social media platforms should find a way of blocking the account of terrorist and making communication on their platform very difficult for them and it was concluded that social media play a big role in creating awareness about the insecurities in the South East Nigeria.