Social Media and Radio News Production: A Study of Selected Radio Stations in Ghana

Abstract

This article investigates social media use by selected radio stations in Ghana. This is against the backdrop that the integration of social media into radio news production has received minimal investigation and documentation, especially within the Ghanaian context. Employing cyber ethnography, interviews and documents analysis as well as the Technology Acceptance and Technology Appropriation models, this study examines how two radio stations in Accra (Peace FM and Citi FM) use social media for news production. The research revealed that social media has been useful in enhancing journalistic tasks of news gathering, sourcing, news reporting, news editing, and public engagement or interactivity. However, the point of departure in terms of the appropriation of social media by the two radio stations lies in the area of news dissemination. Citi FM appears to appropriate social media for news dissemination in a variety of innovative ways through the use of multimedia applications and tools compared with Peace FM. The rationale for the variation in social media use for news production by the two radio stations may be linked to linguistic considerations as well as instrumentality of use. Keywords: Social media, radio news production, Radio in Ghana, Technology Acceptance Model and Technology Appropriation Model