Bridging Rural-Urban Information Gap for Development: The Social Media Imperative


Keyword : Social Media .Rural Audience .Participation .Facebook


Author(s) : Vincent Onyeaghanachi Odoh, Marcel Ikechukwu Nnadiukwu & Sunday Uche Ajah

Abstract :   

Rural communities in developing nations like Nigeria have always a demonstrated need for communication technologies which are calculated to aid, in no small measure, rural communication for rural development. It could be said that the emergence of the social media is estimated a sigh of relief given the spontaneous and interactive attributes of the relatively new invention. With instantaneous reportage from all over the world which defies the protocol involvement of news purveyors, the social media are well disposed to allow the voice of everybody to be heard. The questions are: How equipped are the rural areas and youths to adapt to this paradigm? What purposes have the social media so far served for the rural masses? What are the challenges facing the social media in our rural communities? To answer these questions, the researchers used survey to study the use of Facebook among youths of Igbo Etiti Local Government Area of Enugu State, where it was discovered that lack of basic social amenities and compliant devices militate against the use of social media in rural areas. Among the debilitating variables were poverty, illiteracy and lack of technical know-how among rural social media users. We recommend that communication network providers should as a matter of urgency extend their services to all the rural communities of our nation to enable users have access to the networks. Provision of steady power is another condition that needs immediate attention. 

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