The role of social media in enlightening nursing mothers on the practice of exclusive breastfeeding

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Adetunla, Yetunde and Adetunla, Gbenga (2022) The role of social media in enlightening nursing mothers on the practice of exclusive breastfeeding. Global Journal of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, 10 (8). pp. 72-78. ISSN 2052-6369 (https://doi.org/10.37745/gjahss.2013/vol10n87278)

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Abstract

The globalization of technology which gave rise to Information Communication Technology (ICT) has changed the information seeking behaviour of human which has shifted attention from broadcast and print media to Social Media(SM). Exclusive Breast Feeding (EBF) practice over the years has been a global discussion and its significance has been passed across to Nursing Mothers through several sources i.e. Open campaigns, Hospital Seminars, Television, Radio etc. which has not yielded desirable results. Little or no attention has been paid to the role of SM hence the need to examine the role of SM in enlightening Nursing Mothers on the practice of Exclusive Breast Feeding in Ekiti State. The study adopted a Survey design with a study population of 952 Nursing Mothers. Total enumeration technique was used for selecting sample for the study through Questionnaire. Data collected were analyzed with statistics. Findings revealed that Nursing Mothers in Ekiti State are enlightened about EBF through several SM sources but Facebook and WhatsApp appear to be the most prevalent SM source of enlightenment on EBF practice, a large percentage of Nursing Mothers were encouraged to breastfeed their infants through the enlightenment obtained from SM and some of the challenges in the use of SM is the fact that it consumes time, poor network signal, high cost of data subscription etc. The study concluded that Facebook and WhatsApp are the most effective SM source on EBF. Therefore, the study recommended that stakeholders should push their adverts and campaigns on Facebook and WhatsApp more frequently.

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