Social Agriculture: Examining the Affordances of Social Media for Agricultural Practices

This paper examines the experiences and perspectives of Kenyans who use social media platforms as part of their agricultural livelihoods. Through a mixed-methods study of 324 survey respondents and 81 interviews, it presents data that demonstrates the significance and shape of “social agriculture” in the Kenyan agricultural landscape. This novel focus on farmers’ appropriation of existing social media platforms complements previous ICT4D/HCI4D literature that has primarily focused on purpose-built agricultural platforms.

The study highlights new insights into the growing phenomenon of using social media platforms for agriculture practice, including how these platforms afford particular practices around the buying and selling of produce and information on social media platforms. It also identifies challenges around trust and online abuse and describe the strategies employed by participants to counter them. Lastly, it highlights the affordances and constraints of using social media platforms, thus contributing to the field an initial conceptualization of social agriculture as a space of commerce. It concludes with eight design considerations for both technology designers and international development stakeholders to strengthen the potential for social platforms to afford social agricultural practices that enrich individual lives and livelihoods.

This paper was presented at COMPASS, the Association for Computing Machinery SIGCAS/SIGCHI Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies, held June 29–July 1, 2022, in Seattle, WA.