Abstract

This research project explores the Impact of WhatsApp Usage on the Academic Performance of Journalism and Mass Communication Undergraduate students in the University of Buea. Using the descriptive survey research design, through the administration of 100 questionnaires, it was found that the use of WhatsApp affects the academic performance of Journalism students both positively and negatively.

Positively so long as the dominant use is for study-related purposes and negatively in the sense that WhatsApp can act as a distraction and can cause students to spend lots of time doing unproductive activities instead of reading. Hence affecting their academic performance negatively.

CHAPTER ONE

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

1.1: BACKGROUND OF STUDY

The rapid advancement of technology and innovations such as social media, has greatly changed the way in which people communicate. The transmission of signals from one person to another has been made easier with the advent of social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, Telegram, Facebook, and WhatsApp. One of the most used digital mediums is the WhatsApp instant messaging application (WA).

WhatsApp was said to have grown to 1 billion users in 2016 in a study carried out by Statt, Nick (February 1, 2016). It is the world’s most popular text and voice application in the 21st century and has over 2billion users in the year 2020 according to Digital investigations (2015). Many people nowadays own smartphones, tablets, and other electronic devices that grant them easy access to the WhatsApp instant messaging application.

WhatsApp was invented by Brian Acton and Jan koum in 2009 for easy and fast communication distribution of multimedia messages. It was designed as a replacement for the messaging application which lacked a lot of interesting features. Ever since its creation, it has evolved to be one of the most liked social service networking technology that is common on smartphones and desktop and laptop computers, as long as the user’s device remains connected to the internet. WhatsApp requires a cellular mobile telephone number to sign up.

As more people turn to use WhatsApp, more WhatsApp applications are being created like, WhatsApp Business (2018) targeted at small business owners to allow companies to communicate with customers. Other WhatsApp apps include; WhatsApp Beta, WhatsApp Web, WhatsApp Plus, GB WhatsApp, and WhatsApp Aero.

The WhatsApp Instant messaging application has a lot of interesting features such as instant messaging, status viewing, audio, and video calls, images, audio files, sending and receiving links to websites, and group chats. The name WhatsApp came about from the statement “what’s up” usually used to know someone’s current status. All these interesting features made it have so many users. In an article written by Eugene kim (2015), WhatsApp was said to be the primary means of internet communication in multiple locations, including Latin America, the Indian Subcontinent, and large parts of Europe and Africa with over 2billion users.

One of the most interesting features of the WhatsApp instant messaging application is its ability to allow users to create group chats to discuss issues with everyone sending their opinions. This may explain why many Under Graduate students make use of this application. With this group chat feature, there is an administrator or many administrators who create the group and include people into it, in the University milieu the group will comprise of both students and lecturers. Lecturers send PDF files for students to read and ask questions or students could still decide to have the group purposely for revision towards exams it all depends on them and when the group is created participants send their own contributions into the group.

With the advancement of technology and the creation of digital media, learning is expected to be more student-centered where students do more of the work, rather than teacher-centered where teaches are expected to chew everything for the students to swallow. This has gone a long way to encourage the use of digital media especially WhatsApp in education. Lecturers send educative material in WhatsApp groups for students to research ahead of time.

The way WhatsApp functions and the way in which it is being used, is in line with the connectivism theory of Siemens (2005), a learning theory for the digital age. It explains how internet technologies (a case study for research is WhatsApp) have created new opportunities for people to learn and share information across the world wide web and among themselves.

A key feature of connectivism is that much learning can take place across peer networks that take place online. In connectivism learning, a teacher will guide students to information and answer key questions as needed in order to support students learning and sharing. On their own, students are also encouraged to seek out information on their own online and express what they find. With the WhatsApp instant messaging application,

Communication between lecturers and students is made easy especially with the group chats feature, WhatsApp is used in the University as a rapid medium for the dissemination of information that could be fake or true. This application just like everything we use has effects that could be positive or negative. This research aims at examining the effects of WhatsApp usage on the performance of undergraduate students at the University of Buea.

1.2: Statement of The Problem

In the University milieu, more and more students are using the WhatsApp instant messaging application. This is made easier for them as it can operate on nearly all current types of devices and operating systems as long as they have installed the application and have an internet connection.

Undergraduate Students at the University of Buea use this WhatsApp application for group chats, sending and receiving information, images, and videos. Some are regulated (correct information) and others are non-regulated (false information, obscene images, and videos). These students discuss school, course-related and personal issues on the application, this is good as it facilitates learning and brings about a feeling of belonging ( Nichols-Besel, lewis, veletsianos  2008).

Considering the fact that WhatsApp is one of the most essential means of communication and that the use of this platform by students cannot be underestimated, I am curious to find out if the use of this Application affects their academic performance in a positive or negative way given that researches such as the one conducted by Maya (2015) revealed that ‘Media used to contribute to … academic performance’. This research, therefore, seeks to investigate the effects of WhatsApp Usage on the Academic Performance of Journalism and Mass Communication students in the University of Buea.

1.3: Research Questions

This research aims at answering the following questions;

1. Why do Journalism and Mass Communication students in the University of Buea use WhatsApp?
2. How does WhatsApp usage affect the performance of these students?
3. Do they get better or poor results when they don’t consult WhatsApp?