Term Project Presentation of the Course Research Methods By Alemitu Mequanint

Power of Social Media Users for Local Content Generation: Understanding

Facebook Users in Ethiopia

Term Project Presentation of the Course Research MethodsBy Alemitu Mequanint

Course Offered by Prof. Khan and Prof. Bobby

Fall 2013

Contents

• Introduction• Background• Literature Review• Research Questions• Research Design– Data Collection– Analysis and Results

• Discussion• Conclusion & Recommendations• References

Introduction• Societies have a rich heritage and knowledge base that should be

recognized, recorded and shared • Much of the world’s content remains inaccessible – ‘content divide’• The content that is most important to people is typically in their

own language and is relevant to the communities

Communities :• Location • Culture• Language• Religion• Ethnicity• Interest

Introduction

• Local Content: Definition• Local content includes everything including history, culture,

religion, values, norms, heritages, literature, and all indigenous knowledge of a group of people with common interest in a given local place

• “Local content refers to what a community creates, owns, or adapts in terms of knowledge ” (Ballantyne, 2002).

• “Everything that is locally-owned, locally adapted, produced, or published ” (Mutula , 2007) .

Introduction• Content Divide

• Much of the world’s heritage and knowledge bases remain inaccessible

• Global Web content is dominated by top 10 languages – 82% of Internet users

Introduction

• Content Divide…– Huge gap between developed and developing nations– Surveys revealed that Africa’s web content contribution is only

0.4% of global web content – Excluding South Africa’s part, only 0.02% (Graham et’al, 2011)

Developing nations remain only consumers offoreign content

Introduction…• Content Divide…– Local content generation and dissemination should

be highly promoted and encouraged WHY?– It is a powerful force and driver to national development as it

is closely tied to human development and empowerment of local communities (Mutula, 2008)

– One way, probably the best option, of achieving generation of considerable amount of local content within short period is

using the power of social media users

Introduction…

• Thanks to the web 2.0 technology and social media, users are able to easily create and distribute their own content on the web with minimum technical knowledge

Introduction…

• User Generated Content (UGC):• UGC is content made publicly available over the Internet,

involves a certain amount of creative effort, and is created outside of professional routines and practices (Sacha et’al, 2007)

Introduction…• ETHIOPIA:– Rich in history, literature, heritages, culture, art, and much more

indigenous knowledge– No exception for content divide, heavily depend on foreign

content

Facebook Users

≈ Internet Users

Population 90 Million

Internet Users 960,331

Internet penetration

1.1%

Facebook Users 902,440

Facebook penetration

1.0%

http://www.internetworldstats.com/africa.htm

Introduction…• In order to strategically facilitate and promote user content

generation on the web, first we have to understand:• Social media trend• Social media users• how users are performing on the content generation on the

web• type of content are mostly generated

• In this paper, we are exploring to answer these questions on Facebook users in Ethiopia

Literature Review• Content Generation Motivations:

– Functional theory: one's behavior becomes a function of their attitude toward that behavior (O'Keefe 2002)

– To influence behavior, we must understand its motivational source

– Katz's (1960) typology of motivational sources: utilitarian, knowledge, ego-defensive, and value-expressive

Literature Review

• Terry et’al (2008) adapted this theory for content generation:

• Utilitarian function: acknowledges that people are motivated to gain rewards and avoid punishment from their environment (self interest)– Users create UGC primarily for their own personal incentives

• Knowledge function recognizes that people are driven by the need to gain information - Creators of UGC therefore would produce UGC because it helps them understand their environment, the topic at hand

• The value-expressive function entails attitudes that allow people to express or relate their self-concepts and values - Creators of UGC feel inherently gratified with a sense of self-esteem because they have created content and become members of an online community that shares the principles they consider important

Literature Review

• Ego-defensive function: represents motivations designed to protect people from internal insecurities or external threats, which serve the internal function of defending one's self-image.

• In this case, UGC creators participate to minimize their own self-doubts, feel a sense of belonging, and possibly reduce guilty feelings about not contributing.

• Oded Nov (2007) – What motivates Wikipidians?• Adopted motivational categories from volunteering behavior:

– Social, career, fun, ideology (an aspect of culture)

Literature Review

• Categorizing User-Generated Content:• Stephan et’al (2007) – UGC Typology• Wikis, blogs, reviews, public short messages, profiles

photo, audio, video (narrow sense)

Literature Review• Amaha Diana (2004) – “The number of institutions with Internet

websites is very negligible. Even most of the institutions having a websites were not able to put any content in their URL addresses or the content was much of self introduction”

• Focused on government institutions

• Abel Alemu (2013, not yet published) – role of e-media (websites/blogs) for development

Research Questions

• What is the major motivator for users to generate content on Facebook?

• Is contribution same for all UGC types?• What is the major UGC language?• How much users have their own website/blog?• What other social media are popular?

Research Design• Data Collection:– Quantitative– Sample size was 50, Convenience technique – Questionnaire was prepared and distributed online on

Facebook itself– Participants were asked about motivation, type of UGC they

distribute, language, website, other media• Analysis– SPSS analysis tool was used to analyze the data obtained from

respondents using simple descriptive statistics

Results and Discussion

Results and Discussion

Results and Discussion

Results and Discussion

Results and Discussion

Limitation of the Study

• Due to time limitation, we couldn’t wait more to collect more sample data

• website, language?

Conclusion and Recommendation

• This study is preliminary – further studies are needed based on the results:

• Correlation between motivation factors and level of contribution – helps on which aspect to promote

• Objective of contents (e.g. news, entertainment, education, religion) – a typology is needed

• Why users are mostly using English(keyboard,…)

References• Mutula, S.M. (2008). Local content and Africa's presence on the Web. In Aina, L.O.

(Ed.). information and knowledge management in the digital age: Concepts, technologies, and African perspectives. Ibadan:Third World Information Service, p.56

• Ballantyne, P. (2002). Collecting and propagating local content development: Synthesis and conclusions. Available: http://portalnesco.org/ci/en/files/5578/10342670280.

• Oded Nov, WHAT MOTIVATES WIKIPEDIANS, November 2007/Vol. 50, No. 11 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM

• Stephan Hagemann and Gottfried Vossen, 2007, Categorizing User-Generated Content• Terry Daugherty, Matthew S. Eastin, Laura Bright, Journal of Interactive Advertising,

Vol 8 No 2 (Spring 2008), pp. 16]25.�• O'Keefe, Daniel J. (2002), Persuasion: Theory & Research 2d ed.Thousand Oaks, CA:

Sage Publications. • Katz, Daniel (1960), "The Functional Approach to the Study of Attitudes," Public

Opinion Quarterly, 24, 27-46• (Agbenyo John & Savana Signatures , 2010) Local Content Production and

Dissemination Workshop Report• (ETC, 2003) Local Content Development, International Symposium on ICT Education

and Application in Developing Countries• http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm