AFRICA
AND SOCIAL MEDIA: BLOGGING; ACTIVISM; AND THE FUTURE
by Pamela Ofori-Boateng, AIF News Reporter
According to Africa
Renewal Online, Africans are coupling
their already extensive use of cellphones with a more recent and
massive interest in social media. Africans are leading what may be
the next global trend:a major shift to mobile internet use,with
social media as its main drivers.
Studies suggest that
when Africans go online they spend most of their time on social media
platforms like Facebook; twitter; YouTube and others.
Social media
platforms were primarily used to connect with family and friends, but
the pattern has changed lately. Social media has now become a major
platform for activism in Africa taking into consideration the
abduction of over 200 girls in Nigeria by the militant group Boko
Haram. Most civil society organisations and individuals launched
social media campaigns to help in “bringing the girls back” to
where they belong.
Another recent
example is the “Occupy Flagstaff House”, which was
organised in Accra, Ghana’s capital, on July 1, 2014 with the aim
of asking government to solve corruption; infrastructural decay; and
worsening economy -- among other things. Social media tool, Facebook,
was the main tool used to mobilise the masses for the demonstration.
People in Africa also
use blogging as a social media platform to air their views on topics
they find interesting or topics they want to educate people about.
On the latest edition
of “Africa in Focus”,E.K.Bensah hosted Kwame Ahiabenu of
Penplusbytes and Edward Tagoe of Blogging Ghana on the topic,”Africa
and Social Media:Blogging :Activism and the future”
Mr. Edward Tagoe
stated that every country needs an association of bloggers because
there is a craving for fresh information and so bloggers will provide
a lot more information than what we have in the mainstream media. He
did not mince words to say that the rate of blogging is decreasing
because Twitter as a social media platform has become easy to use and
it is more interactive.
He mentioned
plagiarism and libel as the main challenge confronted by bloggers and
further asked bloggers to cross check their write ups and acknowledge
any source of information they use on their blogs.
Mr. Kwame Ahiabenu
intimated that Ghana now has quite a number of citizen journalists
who aid in the dissemination of information through facebook; twitter
and whatsapp and that the Ghana Journalist Association (GJA)should
include them(Citizen journalists) when structuring the categories of
the annual journalism awards.
Mr. Tagoe reiterated
that since almost all media houses are using social media platforms
like facebook,twitter,whatsapp among others to disseminate
information,it will be a good idea if the association introduces
categories of awards for online news.
Stephen Musyoka,who
won King of Facebook 2010 in Kenya also contributed to the show on
phone by painting a picture of Kenya’s vibrancy on the social
media ladder in Africa. He said that WhatsApp is a very important
tool for business because one can easily send commercials and
pictures of their products to a contact list.
Mr. Musyoka mentioned
that Kenya’s high social media presence is as a result of high and
fast internet connectivity.
He highlighted on
some of the negative aspects of social media like hacking. He gave an
example in Kenya where the account of one government official was
hacked into and the need for governments to regulate the usage of
social media in Africa.
Africa is indeed
progressing when it comes to the use of social media but i believe we
can do more with this powerful tool to a stage where criminals can be
caught through social media just like a news story i watched on Al
jazeera within this week where a thief who stole a lady’s earring
worth 300 dollars was caught within 24 hours just because someone
took a video of him whilst he was stealing and uploaded it on
facebook. Within minutes the videos went viral and it led to the
identification of the thief.
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