A lecturer at Moi University, Dr. Duncan Omanga has won the inaugural Facebook Research Awards, under the Facebook Protect and Care Research projects.
The award which is worth Sh5 million drew a tough global competition that resulted in the head of the department of Publishing and Media Studies in the school of information sciences, Dr. Omanga, scooping the only price in Africa.
The award presented by the social media giant company, Facebook, is aimed at finding out how the platform (Social Media) has embedded the complex lives of its users.
The project and research which is expected to be run locally will run research on places such as Kayole, Umoja and Huruma Estates of Nairobi, in seeking to probe the intersections of journalistic routines, community policing and Facebook, by way of an investigation of the life-worlds and discursive practices that locate criminal gangs, digital publics and the police service in one social media space.
The grant will run the research and possible selected graduate students who will later visit the Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park in California.