An Assessment of the Practices and Challenges of Using Social Media as a Communication Tool for Peace Building: the Case of Ministry of Peace
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Date
2021-02
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AAU
Abstract
Communication plays a vital role for creating favorable conditions for peace building process. Social media is one of the tools that many individuals, governmental and non-governmental organizations are now using as a means of communication tool. The main objective of the study is to assess the practices and challenges of using social media as a communication tool for peace building: the case of Ministry of Peace. The descriptive research design was undertaken by using interviews and content analysis method. Non-probability sampling methods were applied and quantitative and qualitative data collecting techniques were used in this research. The research was conducted based on the collected data by conducting interview with the employees of the Ministry of Peace and by collecting 656 posted data from the Ministry‟s Facebook page which had got the total of 139, 838 likes, comments and shares. The collected data also presented and analyzed based on their themes. Accordingly, among the total users reaction the posted data had got 71.9 percent likes, 22.4 percent shares and 5.7 percent comments. The finding of this study also showed that a lot of information has been posted on the Facebook page, 63.1 per cents were in combination of images and text. Contents posted by this type of posting medium had got 72.4 per cent of users engagement by liking, commenting and sharing it. In addition findings showed that when more information posted on the Ministry‟s Facebook page, several users reacted to the posted contents whereas less number of users reacted when less number of contents were posted on the Ministry's Facebook page. Similarly, 62 percent of the information posted was about peace building and 37.6 percent was about other day-to-day activities. Users comments were also assessed and resulted that 75 percent of the comments were positively stated where as 25 percent of the comments were negatively commented. However, the Ministry Facebook page was one of the main mediums to disseminate information to the Ministry‟s stakeholders; it did not have social media usage guidelines. The Ministry also did not used its Facebook page properly for two way communication and effective peacebuilding purpose. The research concludes that as social media has a direct impact on the process of peace building and the Ministry is responsible to build peace all over the country. Hence, the research highly recommended the Ministry to prepare and implement social media usage guideline, use different social media platforms in different languages and use all posting medium proportionally.
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Social media