6 pages., via online journal., ICT has been initiated and implemented effectively by the
public private partnership, government, researchers and various
Institutions. Availability of wireless service, Internet and mobile
communication have forced ICT to find foothold in daily routine
of the Indian farmers. ICT has huge impact in agricultural
development but still in natal stage. Many farmers are not availing
the actual potential of ICT due to poverty, social constraint,
illiteracy, language barriers and unwillingness to adopt new
technology. Many Indian farmers have reported positive change
in income, quality of produce and timely access to the market
information by using latest mobile application. WhatsApp is the
most popular and easy to use Mobile Instant Messaging service
amongst the Indian farmer. It supports sharing of localized
information and utilizing these services as query redressal
public platform. This paper is an attempt to gather meaningful
agricultural data for analysis and filtering of relevant need based
information assessment. The main focus of the present work is to
develop an automatic information handling and redressal of the
need based agricultural information system using WhatsApp as
social media platform.
8 pages., via online journal., Social media provides huge opportunities and incentives that could ease promotion of agricultural extension, facilitate real-time service delivery and enable wider farmer coverage. Ineffective dissemination approaches, expanding farmer population, low staffing, and aging agricultural extension agents continue to negatively affect the provision of agricultural extension services in Kenya. Despite the social media potential in agricultural communication, lack of awareness and low usage in the rural areas of developing countries have been documented. This study sought to establish the level of social media familiarity among smallholder rural farmers with the aim of exploring the possibility of usage in agricultural extension. The study was undertaken in Thika Sub-County of Kiambu County on 140 farmers through a researcher administered semi-structured questionnaire. Probability-proportional-to-size sampling method was employed to derive the sample size from existing extension farmer groups. Simple random sampling technique was further used to identify the actual respondents from each group. A low level of social media familiarity was established among the farmers with education, age and gender having significant influence. The study recommends awareness creation initiatives to promote social media familiarity with a particular focus on women who form the bulk of the farmers but with the lowest level of social media knowledge.
Conference paper / Journal article, This study examined farmers’ readiness to assess social media as agro-information reception tool in the study area. An interview guide was used in collecting data from 120 farmers who were randomly selected. Data collected were analysed with the aid frequency counts percentages and logit regression. The results showed that half of the respondents (50%) had primary education. About 90% were aware of whatsapp and 12.6% were aware of blogs, respectively. Education, farming experience, membership of farmers’ group and extension access were the variables that positively influence farmers’ readiness to assesssocial media as agro-information reception tool while respondents’ age negatively influence readiness to assess social media. Enlightenment programmes for farmers on the use of social media and an improved extension services to keep the farmers acquainted with the benefits of social media.
6 pages., via online journal., Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is commonly applied to analyse contributions of determinant variables on the adoption of communications technology. However, identifying external variables that affect technology adoption need to explore. This research is aimed to identify the role of education variable in the technology adoption. The study was conducted by survey design. One hundred respondents were determined by judgmental sampling method with criterion that respondents are owners or manager of small medium enterprises that use livestock-based product such as meat, eggs and milk in Bantul Regency, Special Province of Yogyakarta. The research showed that Perceived Ease of Use affected Perceived Usefulness (p≤0.001), and both of those variables were critical factors for Attitude Toward Social Media Use (p≤0.001). The study revealed that Intention to Adopt Social Media is affected by Attitude Toward Social Media Use and Perceived Usefulness (p≤0.001). Then, the test found that education moderates relationships between Attitude Toward Social Media Use and more influential users on those with lower education backgrounds (p≤0.05). Even so, education did not moderate relationships between Perceived Usefulness and Intention to Adopt Social Media. In short, the proposed model was able slightly higher in explaining compare to the original TAM.
