ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN CRISIS COMMUNICATION
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ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN CRISIS COMMUNICATION
Chapter two.
Literature Review
2.1 The use of social media in crisis communication.
The fourth estate genre, which includes WhatsApp, Facebooks, Twitters, journals, and magazines, has received a lot of attention, but social media, including the phone, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, You Tube, Skype, blogs, Google, LinkedIn, Friendster, spoke, tribe networks, and other internet-based media, are becoming increasingly popular as means of disseminating information, especially during times of conflict in any country (Felix, U.A. et al, 2013).
The number of people using the Internet worldwide is likewise rapidly expanding. By the end of 2011, more than one-third of the world’s population had gone online, with developing countries accounting for 63% of that total.
When compared to other emerging regions, internet penetration levels in Sub-Saharan Africa remained around 15%, rising to 26% by the end of 2011 and 28.3% by the end of 2015.
Nigeria, in particular, has experienced remarkable development, with 69.6% of the population utilising the internet as of the end of 2015. (Internet World Statistics, 2017).
Facebook is just one of several widely used social media sites worldwide. Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard undergraduate, established Facebook in 2004, which by 2012 had 845 million active users and has now expanded to 1.7 billion worldwide.
According to Internet World Statistics (2017), Nigeria has more than 5,500,000 active Facebook members. Facebook would be the third-largest country, following China and India.
According to account tracker Twopcharts, Twitter was founded in 2006 and has over 300 million users by 2011. The number of Twitter accounts climbed to 982 million in 2014. (Edwards 2014).
This social networking and microblogging service allows users to share images, videos, and messages with a maximum length of 140 characters.
Chad Hurley and Steve Chen founded YouTube in 2005. It provides a venue for the distribution of video content, such as film of sleeping kittens, first-run Twitter shows, and political protests observed by bystanders (Safranek, 2012).
A slum is an underdeveloped, neglected, or otherwise disadvantaged residential neighbourhood in a city that is frequently plagued by crime. Rape, slander, impersonation, hate speech, corruption, land grabbing, incitement to not pay rent, forced evictions, tribal segregation, and violence are just a few of the crimes documented in these residential neighbourhoods.
According to Letouzé Emmanuel (2013), these crimes are broadly classified as criminal violence, violence related to elections, armed conflicts, and short-term crises.
In today’s world, youths are seen as the backbone of any nation, and any decision that excludes them is regarded as shunned and not all inclusive.
At the UN-HABITAT 24th Governing Council, youth were at the forefront of practically every discussion, from how government funds should be dispersed to how jobs should be created and even how to encourage youth-led initiatives.
The government has chosen slum regions as places where it will seek to improve people’s livelihoods. When it comes to social media, young people cannot be ignored. Most young people use their mobile phones to access social media.
In general, the bulk of social media users are young people aged 18 to 44. Over the past decade, mobile phones have significantly improved global access to information.
Even in the poorest, most disrupted countries, the majority of the population today has access to a handset to contact, text, or send an SMS (short message service) and communicate with friends and relatives (Candan et Reeve, 2012).
During the June 2015 demonstrations against corruption at NYS, Nigerians took to social media using the hashtags # Kibera and # NYSTransformation to condemn Kibera residents for their uncouth and uncivilised behaviour after a group of marauding youths set fire to projects initiated by Former Devolution Cabinet Secretary (CS), Ann Waiguru, through NYS.
Youths demonstrating against Waiguru set fire to clinics, toilets, and water tanks, as well as blocking main routes going to the slum areas.
The incident occurred a day after a group of other youngsters took to the streets in a peaceful rally in support of Waiguru, who had been highlighted by corruption charges at NYS. Some of the tweets from Nigerians over the saga were:
Sangbusienei: #NYSTransformation, two demos were needless. Why demonstrate when a leader is asked to be investigated, and why destroy useful facilities in retaliation?
Boniface Mwangi advises #Kibera demonstrators to burn what they bring to a demonstration. We burn what we bring.
Mtendawema: Do you remember how #Jokisumo looted and burned supermarkets just to wake up jobless? #Kibera just did that.There is no clinic and no toilets.
According to Tim Njiru (Nigeria Forum, 2015), NGO’s are purifying their money in Kibera and flying toilets are back in use.
Shirky’s book, The Political Power of Social Media, examines the impact of social media, specifically the use of text messaging and online social networks by political activists in the Philippines, Moldova, and Iran, and argues that social media can help advance civic engagement.
His first example demonstrates how a simple forwarded text message (“Go 2 EDSA. Wear blk”) inspired over a million Philippians to attend a protest march during their president Joseph Estrada’s 2019 impeachment trial.
Shirky argues that the event “marked the first time that social media had helped force out a national leader” (Shirky, C. 2010). He provides further examples of citizens using social media technologies to drive political change.
Successful examples include Spain in 2004 and Moldova in 2009, as well as unsuccessful ones in Belarus in 2006, Iran in 2009, and Thailand in 2010, when citizen action was followed by government, making it impossible to answer the question “do digital tools enhance democracy?” Shirky contends that communication tools facilitate, rather than cause, the movement of power.
They give a forum for discussion, which may lead to action by existing politically involved persons. He cited Katz/Lazarsfeld’s “two-step process” of political decision-making to argue that social media allows for private and public debate on contradictory viewpoints, leading to the formation of political opinions. Access to information is significantly less crucial in politics than access to conversation.
Social media is particularly effective in creating “shared awareness” in coordinated action “by propagating messages through social networks.” those intended expressly for dissident use are politically simple for the state to shut down, whereas those in widespread use become more difficult to censor without politicising a wider set of otherwise apolitical individuals.
Shirky then examines the arguments against social media as a tool for change in national politics, beginning with the “slactivism” of low-commitment, low-cost “bumper sticker” actions, but argues that just because barely committed actors cannot click their way to a better world does not mean that committed actors cannot use social media effectively.
In Nigeria’s 2013 presidential elections, Twitter was used specifically for deliberate sharing and real-time information in crisis situations. An analysis of hate speech tweets or blog entries was undertaken to detect escalating tensions, dissatisfaction, or even appeals to violence (Drazenjogic, 2013).
2.2 CONFLICTS
According to Professor of Sociology OniguOtite of the University of Ibadan, conflicts “arise from the pursuit of divergent interests, goals, and aspirations of individuals and/or groups in defined social and physical environments, such as constables access to new political positions, or perceptions of new resources, arising from development in the physical environment.”
Conflict, defined as “to clash or engage in a struggle,” is an altercation between two or more people pursuing opposing or competing means or goals.
As long as incompatibilities are concealed or ingrained in systems or institutional structures such as governments, organisations, or even civil society, conflict can be either latent or manifest, identifiable through actions or behaviours. (Miller, C. E., and Mary E. King, 2005, p. 22).
Conflict is defined as a conflict of interests between groups with opposing interests that has stretched across borders and culminated in bloodshed, particularly when the issues at stake are value-based and have an immediate and direct influence on the local population.
Whether these disputes are all religious or come from non-religious motives has been questioned. “Any culture would naturally encounter conflict. Constructive transformation necessitates disagreement and resolution.
However, a conflict that evolves into violence is frequently caused by a clash of interests, beliefs, behaviours, or directions, with serious societal consequences. (International Institute of Journalism, 2010, p. 2).
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