Social Media and Gender Equality: Knowledge, Attitude and Practice

Abstract

Issues of gender representation and visibility on various social media
platforms and access to specific roles, responsibilities, tasks, and privileges,
as well as gender portrayal, have been on the international agenda since
the 1990s, raising concerns about news media diversity and accessibility.
Construction of gender goes on today through various technologies and
individual discourses with the power to control the field of social meaning
and thus produce, promote, and ‘implant’ representations of gender.
Therefore, this study examined the influence of social media on the
knowledge, attitude, and practice of gender equality among residents of
Oyo State. The study is anchored on Technological Determinism Theory.
The study adopts an analytical survey research design. The instrument
of data collection for the study was a self-designed questionnaire. The
findings of the study revealed that Residents of Oyo State became highly
knowledgeable about gender equality through various social media
platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn, which means that they are familiar with all the necessary factors related to
gender equality. Findings also highlight that Residents of Oyo State have
affirmative attitudes towards gender equality. In line with the findings of
this research and other studies reviewed, it is concluded that social media
remains a platform that can go a long way to promote gender equality in
Nigeria and the world at large. It is recommended that the Government,
Non-governmental organisations, and international NGOs should tap
into the opportunities by devising the use of social media, actionable
programmes, and policies to promote equality between genders.