The forum held at the city of Hawassa on the role of government communication office indicated that the sector should operate in way that can effectively prevent the negative effects of the social media and prevent conflicts in a sustainable manner.
According to the Communication Office of the South Nations, Nationalities and People’s Regional State noted that the forum has stressed on the need for communicators to engage in agenda setting, dissemination of accurate information and dissipate confusion created by the social media in various occasions.
Even if the social media can function in various constructive ways, it also can be an agent for negative role players and needs to be effectively via the communication system in the government and it should also be used as a main channel of communication, participants of the forum indicated.
The social media, despite its various positive roles, is disseminating views of narrowists, chauvinists and information whose source is not known, expanding foreign culture and inflaming destructive opinions and tendencies and increasing conflicting ideas and tendencies. Hence, it should be effectively contained before it poses severe challenges, the forum noted.
The participants underscored that the communication system should operate in way that can create mutual national agenda and adequate flow of information in all levels of the governance system. Communicators are duty bound to create mutual consensus on key national issues and strengthen the developmental and democratic state system, they remarked.
Minister of the Federal Government Communication Affairs Office, Negeri Lencho (PhD), also said that the sector is responsible to adequately understand media and communication missions and perform them effectively. The communication system should strive to stave off conflicts based on their reality on the ground and setting ways to address them in a coordinated manner.
If the communication sector misses its target, it could be a source of conflict, he cautioned. It should be led by a planned way to abate moments of conflict and instability.
State Minister of the Office, Firehiwot Ayalew, on her part stressed on the need to create well coordinated and integrated communication system that can adequately prevent destructive roles of the social media. Having common mutual understanding and consensus on various issues among the communicators is very key for the realization of integrated communication, she underlined.