THE ROLE OF BLACKBERRY MESSENGER TECHNOLOGY ON THE USERS’ DEPENDENCY: A STUDY OF PRESIDENT UNIVERSITY STUDENTS COMMUNICATION ACTIVITIES BEHAVIOR

Abstract

Media technology has developed drastically throughout the years. The role of media has also evolved as the society developed. Many innovations and inventions have been created throughout the era to simplify the way of communicating. Devices such as telephones, pagers, cell phones, radio, television and smartphones are very popular in disseminating information. With the existence of BlackBerry, specifically its special feature BlackBerry Messenger, students in President University, especially Public Relations students, tend to use this medium very often in order to communicate with fellow students and staff members. In time, with the high intensity of using this medium, the way students communicate would change unwittingly because students would become too dependent using this medium. Students would tend to choose to communicate through BlackBerry Messenger instead of any other media. The objective of this research is to find if there is a correlation between the intensity of using BlackBerry Messenger and the degree of dependency on this particular medium. The research problem is to find if there is any significant correlation between the intensity of using BlackBerry Messenger and the degree of dependency on the medium among President University students, especially to Public Relation students. To answer the research problem, the researcher uses quantitative research method. Questionnaires were used as the tool to collect the data needed from the respondents of sixty. To find out the answer to the problem raised in this research, the researcher used several theories to analyze the data gathered. The theory that the researcher used to analyze and describe this social phenomenon is Media System Dependency Theory and Media Ecology Theory is used as a supporting theory. Using Spearman Rank-Order Correlation, the researcher calculated the correlation coefficient to be 0.439, which concluded that there is a correlation between the intensity of using BlackBerry Messenger and the degree of dependency on this particular medium.