#AskAg Twitter Chat | Beyond promotion: Using social media for development
Event Information
Have you ever been in the field without access to electricity or running water? What happens if you still want to connect with development practitioners from around the world to engage in meaningful dialogue around the issues affecting your development work? At one of our past #AskAg Twitter Chats, one participant did just that, joining the chat via mobile phone from Jamaica, despite lacking basic necessities including power and water.
Social media presents a tremendous opportunity to increase the flow of knowledge and learning on key development issues to impact the way programs are conceived, implemented, and measured. One key to social media’s value is its ability to foster communications between users, allowing for real and meaningful exchange. Never before has it been so easy to find and directly access the broader global development community on a wide variety of free, easy to access social platforms. And let’s not forget the importance of mobile phones. According to the World Bank, 90 percent of the world’s population had a mobile cell signal in 2010, up from 61 percent in 2003. As more and more people come online through phones, the potential for impact grows. Join us as we explore the following questions on social media for development, and how we can move beyond promotion to knowledge exchange that improves development outcomes.
Join us on Thursday, September 19 at 12 pm EDT for an #AskAg Twitter Chat on social media for development, cohosted with USAID Learning Lab (@USAIDLearning).
Participate for a chance to be featured on USAID Learning Lab! Learning Lab is looking forward to hearing from participants doing innovative work in social media. To capture the learning, Learning Lab plans to choose a case study to highlight in its Learning in Action Series, so make sure to bring your best! Learning in Action articles are intended to paint a more detailed picture of what learning looks like in practice. The case studies represented in this series document the real-world experiences of development practitioners experimenting with learning approaches for the benefit of sharing what's possible.
What are #AskAg Twitter chats?
Guiding questions
- What is your elevator pitch for using social media for development? How do you make the case?
- Describe one of your primary audiences and how you reach them through social media.
- How do you see your use of social media impacting international development?
- How do you measure the impact of your social media efforts? Quantitative? Qualitative? Are traditional measurements useful?
- How has social media changed the way you share research/resources? Has it made a distinct difference in the way you disseminate information?
- What #globaldev issues resonate most on social media? Why?
Twitter accounts to follow
Experts | Organizations & featured contributors |
Roxanna Samii: @rsamii | IFAD: @IFADnews |
Silke von Brockhausen: @svbroc | UNDP: @UNDP |
Milica Begovic Radojevic: @ElaMi5 | |
Lindsay Levin: @LinzLevs |
How to participate
- If you are new to Twitter, visit Twitter.com to sign up for an account. (For more tips on getting started, check out our Twitter training.)
- Explore the guiding questions that will be discussed during the chat.
- Join us for discussion by using the hashtag #AskAg and following @Agrilinks.
- You can also follow on Twubs or through the livestream below.
Livestream
Tweets about "#AskAg"Speakers
Roxanna Samii
IFAD
Milica Begovic
UNDP
Lindsay Levin
USAID KDMD Project & Agrilinks