09/04/2026
EFFECT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON CULTURAL EXPRESSION
By
Onwu Samson Onwu
For IGEDE Carnival Icon Magazine
Introduction
With the advent of the internet, the world has evolved at such an incredible pace. Interpersonal interactions, cross-cultural relationships, and socioeconomic activities have been aided in no small measure through the use of the Internet. One of the foremost devices that have enabled this global interconnectivity is social media. In 2023, roughly five billion people will be using various social media platforms across the world. This figure constitutes about 63 percent of the world's population. This new development implies that the world has been reduced into a global village, and this has impressed so seamlessly on the lifestyle of the users that it has equally had a remarkable impact on the people and their ways of life. As different cultures have different value systems, cultural themes, grammar, and worldviews, they also communicate differently. As different cultures continue to connect through social media platforms, thinking patterns, expression styles, and cultural content that influence cultural values are chipped away.
What, however, seems to be the common notion about social media in Nigeria is that of the blighted version of the mechanism or its subterfuge. It is largely believed that due to the use of social media, Nigerians, especially the youth, no longer have regard for their culture; rather, they value foreign cultures. It would be difficult to affirm or discard this notion because of the inherent variances that could be derived from this situation, depending on the category of people and their focus at a given time. What is not debatable is that social media has increased the connections between people and created an environment in which people can create and share a lot of things.
Social media has presented itself as a ready tool for personal identification, identity validation, cultural crossbreeding, and exports, amongst other deliverables.
What is social media?
Social media refers to the means of interactions among people in which they create, share, and/or exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks. Some of the most popular social media platforms across the world include Facebook, YouTube, Twitter (now known as X), Instagram, Whatsapp, Messenger, TikTok, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Wechat, IMO, and others.
What is common among all these platforms is that they allow for free social interactions among users, and they also enable people to create and share a wide range of contents for a global audience. As of today, Facebook alone has over 3.03 billion users, YouTube has over 2.5 billion users, and WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, and WeChat all have over a billion users.
What these numbers imply is that the world has been knitted into a broad-based virtual community of inquisitive members who are out to seek fun, knowledge, social interactions, adventures, and even economic opportunities. These platforms have also become catalysts for the promotion and propagation of ideas, talents, fashion, and religious and cultural tenets.
It is, however, imperative to note that social media is not a pre-faceted system where particular ideologies thrive to the exclusion of others. Social media is rather an open field where all concepts can find expression depending on the viability of such content and the tenacity with which the proponents of such content indulge the audience.
Social media for cultural expression.
From the foregoing analysis, it could be deduced that social media is an open space for the generation, circulation, and optimization of content. This equally suggests that there are no specific precepts that favor certain kinds of content when getting traction on social media. What determines the vitality of any content is the value that is attached to the content, the status of the user that purveys the content, the season that the content is connected to, and most importantly, the volume of related content spiraling around a particular subject matter.
Cultural expression generally entails those expressions that result from the creativity of individuals, groups, and societies and that have cultural content. In this sense, fashion, music, dance, food, etc. are common ways to express a particular culture. This means that the food, dance, music, fashion, and marriage practices of the Igede people, for instance, represent their culture, and any content that would be viable about them must project the people in such alluring postures. These varieties have to be performed uniquely to suggest the identity and uniqueness of the people whose cultural heritage is being projected.
It therefore means that a person can project their culture and identity using social media platforms by consciously engaging the audience with valuable information about such culture and by developing creative ideas that recapture the people's ways of life in the most alluring way practicable.
Every culture is dynamic and lends itself to change without losing its core values. People can therefore reinvent their culture and modify it to suit common trends using social media. Thus, from common courtesies to fashion, from music to food, every culture yields itself for expression and exploration.
Social media traction is determined by consistency and creativity. Such persons who intend to project their culture on social media must devise means of creating varieties of content in beauty and glam to gain visibility and build sustainable momentum.
One common fear that arises when building a cultural image on social media is that of reckless adulteration and mutilation. Many times, in an attempt to generate viewership in the media space, people tend to manipulate longstanding practices just to appeal to their audience. Such aberration poses a threat to the sanctity of the culture and the acceptance that's required for such a culture to remain viable to outsiders. In common situations, adulteration occurs out of sheer recklessness or ignorance. Some people who feel that there is a cultural gap but who did not do thorough research on a particular topic may end up drawing assumptions about a culture and projecting the wrong doctrine to the world. Such situations would only lead to discrepancies in the narration of that culture and would affect its substance.
In some other common situations, alterations come by way of subdued modifications. This happens when people attempt to apply the rules in certain popular cultures to their own culture, which in their sense is seemingly undeveloped without recourse to the primordial precepts of that culture. There are cultural dynamics as well as cultural statistics. It would be erroneous to attempt to modify the statistics when the community or society has not unanimously accepted such modifications. Projecting such modifications on social media in contrast to what is acceptable in the community constitutes a threat to such a culture. That an aspect of the culture of the Igede people contrasts with what you have learned about that same aspect of the culture of Yoruba people or any other ethnic group does not imply that that of the Igede people should be faced out. All cultures are equal.
Conclusively, it is worthy of note that whatever we project to represent our culture on social media, wittingly or unwittingly, becomes our heritage and the hallmark of our being before external communities. We must therefore seek to know what exactly constitutes our accepted norms and traditions before dishing them out. We must also bear in mind at all times that we do not always have the opportunity to explain to people the real essence of our content other than what should be the interpretation of the average reasonable person. We must therefore be sensitive when designing contents that bother sensitive areas of our culture.
