New Research- Do Social Media Support 'Social' Change?

In a recent article published in the peer reviewed proceedings of the Canadian Communication Association Dr. Ataharul Chowdhury and Dr. Helen Hambly-Odame explore the topics of social media and social change. By critically analyzing the change processes in agriculture and rural development they found that having access to new media does not necessarily actively encourage social and collective change.

Find the article here.

Social Media Possibilities for Farmers

Get Farming Australia looks at the future of farming and sees social media as major tool that can be used by all famers to grow their business and learn. The article states that “in the United States, 76 percent of farmers between the ages of 18 and 35 use social media to share knowledge, connect with consumers and promote their business”. Still in many countries the possibilities that social media has for farmers is still not fully realized, but with over 1 billion people on Facebook and 554 million people using Twitter worldwide the trend is certainly engagement, knowledge sharing, and customer outreach.
See the full article here.

Connecting Locally Across the Web in Rural Manitoba

In rural Manitoba Eric Boisjoli and his team created a Facebook-like social media networking tool using community pages to connect those in rural areas to the events and organizations close to home. As reported on CBC when Boisjoli moved to Ile des Chênes, Manitoba he found it difficult to find out what was happening in his rural community. This lead him to create Community-info with the goal of solving this issue.

Community-info lets its users freely browse the site to find events that are happening in their respective communities. On Facebook and Twitter a user has to be a friend or follower of someone or an organization to hear about their events, but on Community-info the user can browse the events in their communities themselves.

Using Social Media to Avoid Food Waste

Image source: http://goo.gl/ujVavO

Social media can be used to connect with others and broaden the conversation. According to this article a farm in the United States began using social media to avoid waste.

The idea arose after Nick Papadopoulos of Bloomfield Farms in California found he was repeatedly returning from markets with high quality unsold produce. After one weekend of being at the markets he began to promote what produce was left using Facebook and selling it at discounted prices. It turned out to be such a success that that Papadopoulos has created a blog-like website to connect with even more people called CropMobster.

With CropMobster many farmers and grocers can contribute and connect with small businesses or charities looking for less expensive good food.

Facebook is Getting the Conversation Going

Image source: http://goo.gl/2BDOVC

Facebook has recently announced that it will begin allowing its users to connect to broader conversations or trending topics using the hashtag, already in popular use on other social media platforms. An article in TechCrunch states that the hashtag on Facebook will involve capabilities such as “searching for hashtags, clicking on hashtags that come from other services, and writing posts directly from the hashtag feed”.

With the new hashtag feature introduced on Facebook its users may be able to use the social media site more like Twitter is used. On Twitter, using hashtags, you have the ability to begin conversations or even include yourself in conversations on topics far beyond your conventional social group. The result of this is, at the users discretion, they have a voice in either broad topics or niche topics where without the hashtag they would not have this option so easily available to them.

"Ontarian Agri-food and Rural Development Stakeholders Want to See Social Media as a Communication Strategy":

Findings of a Recent Study Conducted by the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs

It seems as though the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) is increasingly interested in understanding the social media use of stakeholders in the agriculture and rural sector; a curiosity that is shared by the researchers of the ongoing study presented on this blog. OMAFRA recently conducted an online survey, created by a leading Canadian marketing research corporation Ipsos Reid, regarding the web browsing and social media usages and attitudes of various actors in the agriculture sector. The online survey, hosted on the OMAFRA website between February 6 and March 5, 2012, was completed by a total of 439 individuals, many of whom identified as farmers, farm employees, agri-students, agri-business personnel, and members of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture.  

The survey reveals an increasing trend of social media use as a communication strategy by the agri-food and rural development professionals in Ontario.  84% of the participants reported using social media in the past year and 73% of the participants found the social networking sites as important to their work. Twitter was the most commonly used social media application for agriculture-related purposes, such as the sharing and capturing of knowledge and information, professional networking and marketing. Following Twitter was YouTube, blogs, and agriculture-specific online social networks. Facebook was one of the least-used applications for agriculture-related purposes, but the most used for personal networking amongst the survey respondents. There is a potential scope for using these tools for business and entrepreneurship development as indicated by 87% of social media users that they would more likely to buy/use specific agri-product/service after a positive review on social media.    

The OMAFRA-supported survey also shed light on gaps in the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the agriculture sector. For instance, 12 percent of respondents identified the lack of agriculture-specific “apps” as a significant drawback to their technology-use. The most significant drawback identified by the participants was the lack of social media use by governmental bodies, including the agriculture sector. With 89 percent of survey respondents in compliance, the report suggests that OMAFRA and service agencies should develop a policy to adopt ‘social media’ as a communication strategy.

The survey provides first-hand information about existing social media practices and depicts a very positive interest about social media by agri-food stakeholders. However, the study has not touched upon in-depth understanding of social media practices such as specific goals, benefits and challenges for networking, relationship building and learning by multiple stakeholders.  The findings urge to conduct in-depth analysis on these issues; a task that the ongoing study on agricultural innovation systems and social media applications by Dr. Chowdhury and Dr. Hambly Odame undertakes.