The African youth and communicative behaviours in digital spaces

Abstract

As digital media platforms have become ubiquitous in all aspects of media consumption (Kaempf, 2018; Ren et al., 2024), there is abundant evidence that media consumers, particularly young people, are moving away from media to digital media (Kemp, 2021). This is demonstrated by the over 40% of Africans who use the internet regularly (Kamer, 2022) and the significant portion of news, advertising, and entertainment consumed on digital platforms (Rao & Nagaraj, 2022). Digital platforms also serve educational purposes (Adjin-Tettey et al., 2022), as many educational institutions have deployed digital technologies to complement other modes of educational instruction (Anderson & Rivera Vargas, 2020). Additionally, digital platforms serve as an important and foremost opportunity for networking among young people (Koch, & Miles, 2021; Sinanan & Gomes, 2020), self-expression and self-presentation (Guo, 2015), the pursuit of entrepreneurial opportunities (Pano & Gjika, 2020), and political engagement and civic action (Hao et al., 2014), particularly for young people.