CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to study

Communication is very vital for human survival; it aids the process of socialization,

transformation and technological advancement. From its rudimentary form when society was

simple and traditional to the present Information and Communication Technology (ICT) era,

communication has been a key factor in achieving human aspiration. Radio was the first medium

after the telephone and telegraph that was able to transmit information round the world. People

were able to listen to what was happening elsewhere. Television came into being as a result of

technological invention that allow information and picture to travel in the whole world today.

With the development of satellite and cable television, people have been given the chance to look

at the same pictures and the same channels, watch the same programs, and share the same

experience.

Basically the Internet is the product of information technology, developed from an early

distribution network known as ARPANET(Advance Research Project Agency Network)

designed by the US Department of Defense in the late 1960s, with the aim of linking academic,

research and military establishments (Wimmer and Dominick: 2000; Large, Tedd and Hartley,

2001;Kim and Weaver:2002). But by the 1990s, the Internet has developed into a

communication technology that is being used to send electronic mail (e-mail), transfer files of

data or programs from one computer to another, as well as gain access to other computers which

stores relevant information among others (Large, Tedd and Hartley: 2001). Nwanwene

1

(2005:120) sees the Internet as the culmination of the so called communication revolution which

according to him,

………is a succession of three overlapping technological stages that have taken place during the past                150 years. The first of these was the Wire Age (1844-1900), the second was the Wireless Age (1900-1970), and the third is the one we are now entering- the Integrated Grid Age, in which                          wire and wireless technology are brought together in powerful combination which has formed the structure of the present global information utility.

The Internet is a computer mediated communication (MCM) facility which according to

Arkerman and Hartman (2002) is a collection of tens of thousands of computers that exchange

information according to some designed protocols. Based on designed protocols, a computer

connected to the Internet transports texts and images and displays them on another computer on

the network. Through the evolvement of Internet, people were provided the opportunity to

interact with friends, family members, conduct research on any topic they can imagine, and

explore the world while sitting in the comfort of their own homes. It also enables students to

communicate with other students abroad and thus share each other‟s ideas, knowledge,

experience and cultures.

As a communication medium, the internet offer users a wide range of benefits. These include the

among other things, in the area of education and research, which according to Usun (2002), is the

most important of all. He cites a number of important areas where Internet can be useful

educationally. For instance, the Internet can be used as a supplement or as a replacement to the

traditional instructional method, where the researcher may find specified websites to gain more

in-depth knowledge about a particular topic. It may also be used to replace the traditional

classroom lecture. A number of courses are now being developed in which portions of the course

2

or the entire course is offered via the Internet. The instructor may place course notes on web

pages, or may create a video recording of a live lecture for viewing on the Internet or use a

combination of both ideas. In addition, there are many online teachers who use the help of this

medium to get better results. Closely related to this is the use of the Internet in the area of finding