Journalists must use the social media to retell the damaging stories about Africa as portrayed by the Western media, Ms Myra Michele Brown, Information Resource Officer at the US Embassy has said.
She said the western web-pages, news papers and broadcast outlets about Africa were filled with stories about wars, hunger, diseases and squalor.
She argued that Africa was not blighted by disease, starvation, hunger and wars alone but replete with many forward looking things such as smiling school pupils despite their problems, beautiful vegetation, and cultural diversity.
“I want the African stories to be told positively through the blog, facebook etc,” she said.
Mr Brown was speaking at a day’s workshop organised by the American Embassy for the media as part of activities marking 2011 World Press Freedom Day, on the theme: “21st Century Media: New
Frontiers, New Challenges.”
The participants were introduced to how to establish their own blogs, which enabled media practitioners to showcase their journals.
Ms Brown explained that social media was a platform for social interaction using highly accessible and scalable communication
technique or the use of web – based and mobile technologies to turn communication into interactive dialogue.
She said a good example of the social media was facebook which connected millions of people across the world and blogs among other interventions.
Mrs Brown said there was so great possibility for African media to aggressively reach out to the world on the wings of the social media with positive stories about the Continent.
She said Government officials could also take advantage of it to get to their electorates as practised in the US.