Innovations in Social Media for

Agricultural Information System

delivery and Networking.

By
Dr. L. Muralikrishnan,
Scientist, Division of Agricultural Extension,
ICAR-IARI, New Delhi -12.
Introduction
 The ICT based extension delivery mechanism is growing as an innovative
extension delivery mechanism with convergence based farmer friendly
diversified crop, enterprise specific and market led extension delivery
mechanism in last one decade in all over the world.
 Social media are web based tools of electronic communication that allows
users to personally and informally interact, create, share, retrieve, and
exchange information and ideas in any form (text, pictures, video, etc.).
 Social media is increasingly being used as a medium of sharing information
and creating awareness. Platforms such as Facebook, Whats App, Twitter,
YouTube and blogs have been used to engage with various audiences.
Cont…

 Social media has become a powerful tool that connects millions of

people around the world.
 Social media is now a mainstream form of communication to grow in
popularity with the increase in the number of smartphones, and the
ease of use.
 Social media is more about sociology and psychology of communication
than about technology (Saravanan and Bhattacharjee, 2014).
 Social media is revolutionizing the way of business to bringing new ways
of communication and exchange of information across the globe.
Cont…
 As of January 2015, 29 per cent of the world population was active on
social media and 23 percent of these accounts are accessed from internet
enabled mobile phones. Face book dominates the global social media
landscape with 1.415 billion active users.
 In growing markets like India, of the 118 million active social media
accounts, 100 million are mobile users.
Scope of Social Media
 The basic philosophy of social media is the democratization of
information, communication and knowledge management (Saravanan
et al, 2015).
 Media for Social Interaction
 Networking Communities
 Intercrossing Relationships (Anonymous 2011)
 Collective Participation among the stake holders (De et al 2012)
 Sharing Group Relationships (Kietzmann et al 2011)
Agriculture Extension
Dissemination of expert agriculture information and technology to farmers

“Training & Visit” extension popularized by the World Bank in 1970s

 Face-to-face interactions of extension officers and farmers

100,000 extension officers in India

 Extension agent-to-farmer ratio is 1: 2,000
 610,000 villages in India with average 1,000-person population
 Very less number of extension workers as compared to number of farmers

7
 Agriculture is world’s largest job providing sector (ILO, 2014) and while
for developed countries its highly commercialized form and
remunerative in nature.
 But, in developing countries the situation is reverse with more
complexity in nature.
 Hence, farmers’ access to reliable, timely and relevant information
sources becomes more critical in diversified and commercial farming
situations.
 More over, Information must be relevant and meaningful to
farmers(Diekmann, Loibl & Batte, 2009).
SOCIAL MEDIA IN EXTENSION EDUCATION
 Success in agriculture and rural development is determined by action of
millions of rural families on an individual basis whose decisions are
shaped by the information, knowledge and technologies available to
them (FAOb, 2015)
 How can the speed and effectiveness of agriculture extension be improved
at a reasonable cost in the present farmers increased literacy in Rural
India.
 Hence, ICT oriented Social media based extension delivery with location
specific farmer’s participation is the suitable solution.
 An appropriate tool for diffusing the information
Cont….

 Social media is becoming a very important tool in farming through to

connect the farmers and agribusiness people from over large geographical
distances.
 The benefits of this can be as large or as small as the farmers choose,
depending on how much time we wish to spend on it.
 Social media plays a very important role in enhancing interactions and
information flows among different actors involved in agricultural
innovation and also enhance capacities of agricultural extension and
advisory service providers.
Cont…
 The users exchange information and discuss issues concerning
agriculture based on experience and knowledge.
 This sharing of information facilitates the marketing of the farmers
produce and formation of networks.
 The social media platforms are also used to share links, news articles,
information, feedback and for queries.
Agricultural information service development
history:

Agricultural information dissemination services experienced a

three-stage development process as below.
 
 Initial developing stage (1970–1990).
 
 Establishing stage (1990–2000).
 
 Consolidating and rapid expanding stage (2000–present).
 The provision of agricultural information plays an
important role for the overall development of
agriculture as well improving the livelihoods of
farmers
 The information access with knowledge and
experts support through ICT-based information
dissemination services, farmers are able to
improve their income and economic situation
through adoption of better practices.
The key impact of agriculture
information services

 Improved the efficiency of Agriculture Services.

 Increased farmers’ income.
 Improved agriculture productivity.
 Reducedthe digital gap between rural areas
and modern cities.
Innovations in Social Media for
Agricultural Information System
delivery and Networking.
 Facebook, YouTube, blogs, wikis and podcasts provide large potential for
use to extensionists but the content and outreach needs to be determined
based on users and content (Kinsley, 2010; Gharis et al. 2014).
 A YouTube search with the keyword ‛farming’ yields about more than
300,000 hits and ‛agriculture’ yields about more than 889,000 hits while
‛agricultural extension’ gives more than 10,400 hits.
Social Media Tools

 By institutes Facebook
 By farmers
 YouTube By Institutes
 By Extension Personnel
 Whats App
 Twitter by Institute and by Scientist
 Agropedia
 Blogs
 Skype
 GFRAS Global survey on use of social media in agricultural extension and
rural advisory services conducted online during 11th February to 31st May,
2015 across 62 countries with 229 respondents
 It found that, Facebook was to be the most popular social media platform
used by AEAS actors.
 The major activity on social media was searching for news and events and
sharing information.
 A major impeding factor for social media use was the lack of authenticity
of information shared online.
 Ninety five percent of the respondents believed social media can play an
important role in bridging the gap between stakeholders in AIS.
2. Twitter
Micro blogging site Twitter is one of the most popular social
media platform globally with 320 million users.
3. YouTube: It is a video sharing platform and it is the third
most visited website in the world.
4. Blogs:Blogs contain detailed information on specific topics.
They create and facilitate in - depth discussion on any issue
through comments from the readers.
Institutional Blog
5. WhatsApp: A messenger app for smart phones, it is an internet
based messaging platform that supports text, audio, video, pdf and
various other forms of files.
Role of social media in agriculture extension
 Save money, time and effort
 Information rich and interactive
 Per unit cost is less as compared to traditional form of extension
 Experts can be contacted directly
 Suitable for creating awareness among the users
 Supplying extension information to a nationwide
Cont…
Facilitate quick dissemination
Extending outreach to new audience
Publications in agriculture extension can be shared
Attracting youth towards agriculture
Widen the scope of extension
Help in market-led extension
Assist to get feedback
Barriers in social media

1. User oriented barriers

2. Extension workers oriented
3. Content Oriented barriers
4. Infrastructure barriers (Jespersen 2014)
Conclusions
 The society – the rural people, the field level extensionists, farmers – do not
read journals; they read blogs, watch YouTube and use Facebook and Twitter
and these are the mediums that reach them effectively.
 Social media has a huge potential to revolutionize communication but its success
depends, to a large extent, on the innovativeness of grassroots level
organizations.
 Moreover, without infrastructure, only information can do very little. Extension
is not just about communicating but bringing behavioral change thus mere
sharing posts and social media activism is not going to change much without
practical actions.
 A multi level approach and initiatives at institutional and individual level
together is needed to make social media a reality in every sphere of agricultural
extension and advisory services.
Thank you