Transfer of Technology through Social Media in Pandemic Perspective

Abstract

Currently the entire world is passing through a crisis situation caused by corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19). All activities are shuttered during lockdown but not the primitive activity i.e. Agriculture. Due to Pandemic, the extension professional contact is more digital than physical contact. In recent past extension professionals are using social media as an effective tool for transfer technology due to the enormous penetration of the internet and Smartphone’s among the majority of rural India. The present study was conducted with an objective to focus on the change in usage of social media during pandemic by extension professionals. A structured questionnaire was developed to interview the Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK) extension professionals under ATARI, Kolkata (zone- 5) through Google forms. The usage of social media was studied with few indicators viz., time spent on social media, the purpose of using social media and individual trend of using social media in comparison with general and pandemic conditions. The result from the study revealed that extension professionals had a significant positive change in the time spent on social media during the pandemic situation. A drastic change was observed in the time spent categories of 4-6 hours and more than 6 hours (increased by 11.21%) due to lockdown situation. Extension professionals started to reach more participants during pandemic through social media platforms. The majority of the respondents (increased by 15.88%) justified that they could reach 100-500 farmers during pandemic with the help of social media. Positive improvement was observed in the purpose of using social media like sharing knowledge to farming community, using social media for discussion, and to promote new technological advances with the overall raise of 26 percent. More than fifty per cent (60.74%) of total respondents felt that their trend in using social media was at a medium level and only 18.69 percent of respondents felt a high trend in social media usage. From the study we can justify that the extension professionals had a positive change in the usage of social media platforms in a productive way to transfer the technology to the farming community.