Social networks
The study Digital 2019 Niger, by ARCEP, shows that in a population of 22.302.377 million people, there are 11.684.769 mobile subscriptions (52,9 percent), 5.470.434 million (24,53 percent) Internet users. There are also 480,000 active social media users (2.1 percent) and 450,000 thousand mobile social media users (2 percent). The ease of disseminating information in real time and sharing audio and video content has increased the popularity of smartphones and the active participation on social networks, which have become one of the main means of communication and sources of information for all audiences in Niger.
The most popular social media is WhatsApp, used both by educated people and illiterate ones, followed by Facebook, especially used by literates. Social networks help maintain friendship and family ties and have become more popular than traditional media that are de facto neglected. Sensationalism and the publication of fake news are the main drawbacks of the rise of these platforms.