Social Profile of Internet Users in the Republic of Ghana: The Educational Dimension

Abstract

Introduction. Since the COVID-19 pandemic in Ghana, the informatization of the society has become truly actualized; providing access to the Internet in the household and various areas of life is becoming no less important than access to education. At the same time, the educational system is facing challenges unfamiliar to Western countries, operating under the conditions of intersection between the elimination of illiteracy, typical of the traditional stage of societies’ development, and the advancement of digital skills as a feature of information societies. To understand the state’s progress in informatization, the extent of Internet popularity in Ghana as well as the target audience of users and their socio-demographic characteristics should be determined. Exploring the penetration of the Internet within the Ghanaian educational system and its specifics of informatization allows for a social portrait of Ghanaian users among students, which is the aim of the study. Materials and Methods. The Cultural approach was used in order to determine the integration of the Internet into the educational system of Ghana, as well as to clarify the target audience of users in the educational system at the school and university level, and to identify the specifics of informatization in Ghanaian education. The key methods were as follows: cultural analysis, content analysis, comparative-pedagogical analysis, interviewing of Ghanaian students. The cross-cutting method was comparative-statistical analysis, which made it possible to compare national data and data of individual foreign monitorings and surveys on the internetization of Ghana in order to compile a social portrait of users in education. Findings of the study. The study identifies characteristics of the average Ghanaian user along with those within the educational system in particular. Besides, it determines the barriers to Internet penetration in educational institutions as well as current challenges in this area, and measures to overcome them. Moreover, the study finds out that Ghana has made significant progress in internetization compared to most African countries, however is not yet able to provide access to all educational institutions, which hinders the national education enhancement. Conclusions. It is revealed that in the educational system, a typical Internet user is a young 18–23-year-old man from a wealthy family, studying in a public university in the south, owning a smartphone and a laptop. The study helps to understand the digital experience and digital literacy of Ghanaian students as well as their Internet usage patterns, and will be useful in teaching Ghanaian students in higher education institutions in other countries as part of their academic mobility.