Impacts of Social Media on Dagu Communication: The Perception of Facebook Users
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2016-07
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The current study aimed at finding out the impacts of social media, particularly Facebook on the traditional Dagu communication of the Afar people in North Eastern Ethiopia. The study is basically situated within the theoretical frameworks of technological determinism theory and theory of networked society. The study employed both qualitative and quantitative methods. For the qualitative method, in-depth interview as a data gathering tool was employed. Interviews were conducted with five social media information activists and three experts selected purposefully. For the quantitative method, questionnaire was used as a data gathering tool. The questionnaire was distributed to 200 non-randomly selected participants. Data were collected from students at the Three Higher Educational Institutions in the Afar Regional State, basically Samara University, Samara Health Science College and Aysaeta Teachers Training College. Obtained data were analyzed through statistical percentage for quantitative and thematic description for qualitative. The analysis of the data reveals that social media, especially Facebook is very important for communication, as it enables ordinary people to access incidents throughout the globe; it also networks the people cheaply and easily. The data indicates that participants of this study use Facebook to get information, to interact with people and to share information/Dagu of their own. It was found that with all its importance and function, Facebook impacts face-to-face communication and social interaction of people negatively, thus it also impacts the traditional Dagu communication of the Afar people, which is basically done in social interaction approach. Furthermore, users were fearful of the credibility of the information provided via new media. Based on the findings, some recommendations are suggested.
Description
Keywords
social media