Voices from the other Side: Reclaiming Africa’s Story through Social Media

Dr. Ratzinger E. E. Nwobodo

Citation: Dr. Ratzinger E. E. Nwobodo, "Voices from the other Side: Reclaiming Africa’s Story through Social Media", Universal Library of Innovative Research and Studies, Volume 01, Issue 01.

Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

With the meteoric advancements in science and technology, the world has increasingly evolved into a global village: bringing in diverse nationalities together at the global table. In this new tapestry of cultures and identities, Africa, with its torturous past history of racism, slavery and colonization, which adversely eroded her cultures and identity, often struggles to extricate itself and stand out in this heavy cauldron of misresented narratives and global influences that threaten to drown out her distinctive voice. This study, cognizant of the current global tilt of young people away from a formal classroom setting towards the more hybrid social media platforms, coupled with the democratization of information dissemination and interactions that these platforms bring, poses a critical research question: Can social media serve as a newmedium for reclaiming Africa’s story? To answer this, the study employing a method of critical analysis and relying heavily on secondary sources such as books, research articles and archives to carry out the discourse, discovers that misrepresentation of Africa overtime by Western media has led to identity crisis for Africans, especially young Africans of the contemporary age, who do not know Africa beyond the Western narrative. It notes that given the common place of social media in the contemporary world, it can serve as a veritable instrument for reclaiming Africa’s story: creating a balance in past narratives told by the West and currently by globalization, which robs Africa of its distinctive identity.


Keywords: African Identity, Social Media, Global Village.

Download doi https://doi.org/10.70315/uloap.ulirs.2024.0101005