Dr. Chowdhury Discussing Social Media and Extension

Dr. Ataharul Chowdhury was recently featured in Top Crop Manager where he discussed the scope of this project, including the next phase. Chowdhury describes the the efforts of this project as exploring how various stakeholders in the agricultural community can use social media as a tool for communication and exchange in a useful and practical way. The next phase of the project includes surveying individuals in the rural development and agricultural community to grasp in further detail how social media is being used at the moment.

Check back in the coming weeks for more updates.

University of Guelph feature here.
Top Crop Manager article (page 34) here.

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 Connects Rural Women in Australia

In this brief but telling article from Australia the new head of Australian Women in Agriculture uses the ease of connection with social media to stay in touch with other members. These new connections are hoped to foster more conversations across expansive geographies to provide support for women in rural areas.

RuralTube

Poor connectivity and population decline in rural Ontario present challenges to those who reside there as well as governments and other stakeholders. Before we can consider using social network technologies and mobile phone technologies to bridge the rural/urban or rural/global divide it would be prudent to discuss what it is that makes rural Ontario rural? Is it a lifestyle that is idealized or is it opportunity for economic growth? As reported on the Canadian Rural Research Network’s blog current affairs show, The Agenda, looked at these themes through interviews and a Google+ Hangout. 

Read the article and watch the videos here.

Investing in High-Speed Broadband in Rural Ontario

Social media and social networks require investment in infrastructure to accommodate growth in communication and education. In rural Ontario having access to high speed broadband networks will boost social connectivity between the small towns that populate rural areas and the global population beyond. At the moment, as Serge Lavoie writes on the Rural Ontario Institute’s blog, Ontario is lacking in investment in broadband networks that would potentially reverse the population drain currently happening in rural communities. 

Read the full article here.

New Article Published: Transforming roles of agricultural extension agency...

In their recent article published in The Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension, Dr Chowdhury and Dr Helen Hambly Odame raised several critiques on roles of agricultural extension agency in facilitating and strengthening agricultural innovation in Bangladesh. The authors concluded that the public-sector agency encountered several challenges in supporting innovation as a collective action that would satisfy needs of different stakeholders. The authors argue that there is a tendency of the extension agency to remain in a linear paradigm of information dissemination, and does not foresee extension methods (e.g. training, demonstration) as the facilitation of interactive learning and knowledge embedding processes. 

Based on these findings, we get some hints on how the public-sector extension agency would use the new ICT and social media for enabling innovation in Bangladesh.  In this particular case, this is plausible that extension agency (if get access to) would use social media to perform their traditional communication tasks, such as information dissemination. Nevertheless, this is an important question to ask, if we want to harness the power of new media for strengthening agricultural innovation. 
  
Article

Radio and Emerging ICTs

In a recent post by Dr Helen Hambly Odame on the blog Mobilizing Knowledge for Sustainable Agriculture she discusses the established strengths of traditional broadcast radio and the potential to add value to this medium using social media networks and platforms.

Follow the link to read her post: Developing the Concept and Practice of Radio+.

A Knowledge Sharing Platform for Agricultural Water Management

Climate change, water scarcity, and food security are all contemporary issues whose negative effects are sensed at a global scale. Connecting those with shared interests on these topics to find solutions is becoming even more critical.

Agriwaterpedia is a website that functions as a knowledge sharing platform in an attempt to connect researchers, practitioners, students, and others. By using agricultural water management as the basis for conversation Agriwaterpedia also engages with larger concerns like climate change and food security.

Agriwaterpedia promotes freely accessible knowledge and collects articles on the topic of agricultural water management in its online library for all to use.

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.

6 Guidelines for Better Development Outcomes Using Social Media

Image source: Afrographique.

As more people in rural communities and developing countries continue to come online the option to communicate through social media becomes increasingly more viable. The dynamic and non-hierarchical properties of communication through social media tools contrasts heavily with the more traditional forms of radio and television making its use a popular choice in many contexts across the world.

If the power of social media lies in its ability to democratize communication how can you implement social media strategies to strengthen this quality?

On ICTworks Wayan Vota offers 6 guidelines for developing and implementing social media strategies.