Social Media and Gender Equality: Knowledge, Attitude and Practice

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