How social media is asserting itself in the time of corona

**Concerned: Health workers measure travellers' temperatures as the war on Covid.19 rages**. [File, Standard]

All over the world businesses are in a standstill with most countries putting in place measures to combat the Coronavirus pandemic.

For those infected with Covid-19, measures like isolation in designated facilities have been put in place while those who have interacted with the infected or had travelled to infected areas are put in mandatory or self-quarantine.

Kenya is not left out. All the measures stated above have been put in place to combat this virus in order to flatten the curve.

When everyone is inside their houses and only a few people working in essential services allowed to move about, communication becomes the key to ensure that we keep in touch and most importantly, remain sane.

Avenues for getting information about the virus become indispensable as everyone wants to be in the know about the latest statistics.

In our country from 2 p.m. to 3.30 p.m., everyone is glued on their television sets or their mobile devices, to listen in to what the Ministry of Health through the Cabinet Secretary or any other designated person, has to say concerning the figures of COVID 19 cases in the country.

According to a Consumer Insight survey that was conducted between March 28 and 31, Kenyans prefer to get their information via television at 89 per cent but social media is giving the mainstream media a run for its money at 84 per cent, a difference of 5 per cent.

The trend has been noted worldwide with total messaging increasing in more than 50 per cent from February 2020.

Kenyan media has contributed largely to this increase with many media stations looking for sources while doing their stories through the different kinds of social media platforms.

Skype calls are largely being utilised by radio and TV stations to conduct live interviews instead of having guests in their studios.

People in quarantine and isolation facilities rely largely on their phones to communicate.

In March 24 article by Alex Schultz, Vice president of Analytics, and Jay Parikh, Vice President of Engineering at Facebook, In Italy alone, people spent at least 70 per cent of their time on Facebook since the crisis began, Instagram and Facebook Live views doubled and messaging increased by over 50 per cent while the time spent in making group calls (calls with three or more participants) increase by over 1,000 per cent in February alone.

During festive seasons and games periods, Facebook builds capacity for the platform to handle huge numbers of fans using the medium.

The unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic has left the giant rushing in time to ensure the platform remains stable even as people continue to log in, a number being Kenyans.

Sadly as the numbers of people login into social media rise, the amount of false information keeps also goes up.

As many Kenyans continue to stay at home or work from home mediums like the newspaper are scaling down with only 33 per cent attraction rate to Kenyans.