Exploring Social Media as Channels for Sustaining African Culture

Social media have become channels for information dissemination and communication around the world today. Internet and social media users run into hundred thousands daily. With the internet technology, social media, which consists of YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, MySpace, have made the communication process faster, interactive, user friendly and enabling user-generated contents. All these make the influence of social media far reaching; with good sides and bad sides to it. In its wake, Africans have lamented that social media are filled with western-based ideas, values and culture which is deepening the eroding of African culture, even to the point of threatening their extinction. This paper aims at examining how the technologically framed social media can be put to use in sustaining the rich cultures spread across the African continent.

Identity re-creation in global African encounters., 2019

Africa is a continent made up of 54 nation states comprising different tribes and peoples that have their own unique language and cultural patterns. One of the institutions upholding any society is the media that it operates. One of the results of the interaction between the white man and the black man is the introduction of the western media into African societies. The western media also known as the mass media is because of development in western technology and communication skills. According to Ihebuzor (2013), the mass media comprises mainly of newspapers, radio, television and books. A recent addition to the media family is the social media which came forth as a result of the invention of the internet. Kietzmann et al (2011) define the social media as interactive platforms via which individuals and communities create and share user generated content. The mass media is a tool that can help in the growth and sustenance of the society as it is structured to gather and provide the society information about itself that will inform, educate and entertain its members. The influence of technology on the media in any society is one of immense value. The speed at which information is gathered and disseminated through a medium has to do with the medium involved. Technology gotten from the Greek word "Techne" means art, science or skill. Technology can be defined as the systematic application of scientific or other organized knowledge to practical tasks (Omoniyi: 2005). It involves the systematic and integrated process of managing and sustaining men, machines, ideas and procedures to achieve the goal of educating, entertaining, informing and enlightenment members of the society. The history of the mass media is replete

Book Chapter, 2023

Social media has revolutionized the way Africans communicate and socialize. People now create, share, exchange, and modify their ideas in virtual communities. This chapter critically presents the benefits and pitfalls of social media in Africa, demonstrating that social media is a double-edged sword. On the positive side, social media has connected geographically separated people, enabled user-generated and interpersonal communication, enabled fast and efficient communication, empowered society with an unrestricted flow of information, and facilitated online learning and work-related functions. Social media also facilitates decentralized democracy and the political engagement of the masses. It has also become a platform for Africans to demystify the "dark continent" narrative. On the negative side, social media is timewasting, creates an antisocial generation, and negatively influences African culture. It also promotes cyberbullying, criminal activities, the spread of sensationalism, hate speech, xenophobia, threats to national security, and false information. Overall, social media has become a "valuable repository of information," a "hyperspace," a "new world," and a "form of currency" in its own right. In essence, new forms of citizenship are emerging across the continent, placing African governments in a complex puzzle of considering censorship and regulatory control to curtail the power social media is granting to the masses. However, an increasingly networked society in Africa is not merely a potential threat to the continent; the increased connectivity also has positive implications for the continent's political, economic, and socioeconomic transformation.

Technology is one factor that has changed the ways, methods and beliefs through which the African society progressively operate on a daily basis. The media as a part of society is not left out of this constant and continuous change. The social media is one which has a growing population of users and audience in Africa despite the many challenges faced by African countries in their bid to meet up with the development indexes set by international bodies under the umbrella of the United Nations. The average African society cannot deny the influence of the various forms of media on its traditional, religious and cultural ways of life. Many are of the opinion that cultural imperialism will one day see to the extinction of the African culture and the loss of the African identity. This article looks at the link between the African society, the African identity and the social media. It also looks at the concept of virtual ethnicity and how the social media can be used to promote ethnic values and possibly create virtual ethnic groups in a technological driven world that promotes the individuality of the human being.

WACSI Op-Ed, 2020

In contemporary society, social media has made access to information easier. Social media has the potential to fundamentally change the character of our social lives, both on an interpersonal and a community level. Decades ago, African leaders dreamt of connecting African countries with roads and railways. Today, social media presents another excellent means of connecting African countries. But it seems to be highly underutilised to serve this purpose despite the high number of subscribers. Africans, especially the youth are positively embracing social media. According to Silver and Johnson, adults younger than 30 are more likely to go online than those aged 50 and older. They are relying on it for information, education and entertainment. This paper explores the growth trajectory of social media on the continent. It presents some opportunities and challenges associated with the use of social media by African youth. It further posits roles diverse stakeholders can play to ensure better and more appropriate use of social media by youths. Read more WACSI Issue Papers here: https://www.wacsi.org/issue_papers.php Read more WACSI Op-Eds here: https://www.wacsi.org/opeds.php Read WACSI Research Reports here: https://www.wacsi.org/reports.php

Africology: The Journal of Pan African Studies, 2017

Social media usage has presented another platform for the African voice to be heard all over the world; with social media African people have the medium to tell their own story to the world. Thus, this paper aims at examining how technologically framed social media articulations have contributed to the realization of a global stance for the African voice.

Technology no doubt is the engine that drives the modern world, both for destruction and good; and one of the wonders of modern technology is the computer and the allied internet. Modern communication network now relies on the internet using the computer and mobile telephones. In fact, there is no place to hide with the internet and the handy smart phones with which calls are made and pictures and videos recorded and transmitted across boundaries and continents. The advancements in the computer and internet systems in the last decade of the 20th century produced radical changes in both internet connectivity and features available to users through which people are linked across the globe. The three most basic of these internet features that have radically shaped modern communication are, Facebook, Twitters, and the U-Tube, among others. The three are the most popular and core elements of the social media compartment of our modern internet system. Computer technology has broken the boundaries of closed societies and systems, making actions and activities in such systems open and available to the wider world. Through the internet and its core elements, repressive regimes have been exposed and activities going on in liberal societies are shared. Interestingly, Africa became the starting point for the agitation for political change, which was bolstered by the social media. The so-called “Arab Spring”, which first started in Africa through expositions of social media, saw the dismantling of three despotic and ruthless regimes in Arab North Africa, thus giving vent to agitations for an end to dictatorship and illiberality in other Arab states. The paper will examine the role of the social media in political transformation and change of dictatorial regimes in Africa and the consequences such would have on the overall political template of Africa.

Africa institute of South Africa policy …, 2011

Digital Dissidence and Social Media Censorship in Africa, 2022

This book reflects on the rapid rise of social media across the African continent and the legal and extra-legal efforts governments have invented to try to contain it. The relentless growth of social media platforms in Africa has provided the means of resistance, self-expression, and national self-fashioning for the continent's restlessly energetic and contagiously creative youth. This has provided a profound challenge to the African "gatekeeper state", which has often responded with strategies to constrict and constrain the rhetorical luxuriance of the social media and digital sphere. Drawing on cases from across the continent, contributors explore the form and nature of social media and government censorship, often via antisocial media laws, or less overt tactics such as state cybersurveillance, spyware attacks on social media activists, or the artful deployment of the rhetoric of "fake news" as a smokescreen to muzzle critical voices. The book also reflects on the Chinese influence in African governments' clampdown on social media and the role of Israeli NSO Group Technologies, as well as the tactics and technologies which activists and users are deploying to resist or circumvent social media censorship. Drawing on a range of methodologies and disciplinary approaches, this book will be an important contribution to researchers with an interest in social media activism, digital rebellion, discursive democracy in transitional societies, censorship on the Internet, and Africa more broadly.