The Role of Social Media within the Context of ICT4D Projects: How can the use of Social Media Enhance Project Adoption?

Abstract

Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) attempt to make the benefits of the information and communication enabled by technology available to developing or disadvantaged groups, but these projects have historically faced challenges of adoption and sustainability. Social media can potentially provide growth opportunities for ICT4D nonprofit organizations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) through project adoption and collaboration; however, projects lack guidance on how to track and analyze the impact of the social media campaign on adoption of an ICT4D project. Historically, nonprofits and NGOs have relied on their websites to provide information to key stakeholders and partners, but social media provides an outlet for real-time collaboration as opposed to one-way information dissemination. In the case of ICT4D projects, the collaborative nature of social media can provide a channel to solicit feedback, impart good practices, and drive adoption of the solution for which the project is being conducted. In particular, the 3-2-1 service, a potentially high-value initiative, may benefit from including a social media campaign. The 3-2-1 service allows for organizations to make their content available to everyone within a country, ondemand, for no-cost using a toll-free short-code and using an interactive voice response (IVR) menu. Users dial the short-code and navigate the menu to select content about agriculture, financial services, health, etc.; content would be provided in their local language and recorded by native speakers. This paper explores the manner in which social media can benefit the adoption of the 3-2-1 service within country programs run by the Catholic Relief Services nonprofit organization. Additionally, this paper provides a proposed toolkit that can be used to create a social media campaign to drive adoption of any ICT4D project and provides proposed metrics to track success.