# The Use of Digital Social Media in Agriculture

Vincent Soulignac, Francois Pinet, Mathilde Bodelet, Hélène Gross

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Vincent Soulignac, Francois Pinet, Mathilde Bodelet, Hélène Gross. The Use of Digital Social Media in Agriculture. International Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Information Systems, 2025, 16 (1), pp.366308. 10.4018/IJAEIS.366308. hal-04904902

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# The Use of Digital Social Media in Agriculture

Vincent Soulignac
INRAE, France

François Pinet
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7011-9216
INRAE, France

Mathilde Bodelet
INRAE, France

Hélène Gross
https://orcid.org/0009-0008-8530-3161
ACTA, France

## ABSTRACT

This article provides a literature review of 21 articles, published since 2015, which analyse the use of digital social media for agriculture. Our study identified the types of agriculture analysed, the technologies used, the countries concerned, and the themes discussed. This literature review offers an overview of the studies on the use of social media in agriculture, as well as the different actors who mobilize these tools. It gives the reader an idea of the different types of social media analysis that are being carried out in this field. We describe the approach we followed for our bibliographical research, and organize the articles into several main themes. We also draw a parallel with another study in the field of preventive medicine that we previously carried out.

## KEYWORDS

Social Meda, Digital Agriculture

## INTRODUCTION

In response to the many challenges facing agriculture (political and societal demands to take the environment more fully into account, including animal welfare, climate change, market uncertainties, etc.), farmers are seeking to design and run agroecological production systems (Roussey et al., 2017; Wezel et al., 2009). Agroecology consists of forms of agriculture geared towards enhancing performance in several respects (environmental, economic, and social performance) by leveraging the natural processes found in agroecosystems and their biodiversity. A wide range of forms of agriculture are considered as agroecological: organic farming, permaculture, soil conservation agriculture, and so on.

Farmers committed to an agroecological approach adapt their practices to their situation and to changes in their production system. To do so, they need to apply and develop scientific and technical knowledge and acquire new skills, both

DOI: 10.4018/IJAEIS.366308

This article published as an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and production in any medium, provided the author of the original work and original publication source are properly credited.
* on a day-to-day basis, to make operational choices that are consistent with the objectives set and which can sometimes be destabilizing when the farmers are faced with situations they had never encountered before and

* over the medium and long term, to think strategically and tactically about their farming system.

Agroecology is profoundly changing the relationship between farmers and agricultural advisors. The latter are no longer prescribers in this process but facilitators of continuous learning and of constant solution building in specific situations.

As a result, more and more farmers are forming or joining peer groups. These collectives help them not only to make technical progress (discovering new practices, sharing feedback, etc.) but also, on a more emotional level, to (re)gain confidence, feel motivated (again), and feel less alone in the face of difficulties. The collectives can take on different forms around the world. These groups are often run by farm advisors, who thus take on new roles as group leaders or community managers.

Social media combine technical, social-interaction, and content-related dimensions. They involve all the tools of the Web 2.0, which differs from the first phase of the web, referred to as Web 1.0 and made up of classical websites that do not involve interactivity with Internet users. Social media allow Internet users to react to information, to create content themselves, and to circulate and share information. In common parlance, the terms “social media” and “social networks” are often used interchangeably. In this article, however, we consider that social networks are just a subset of social media, consisting of interactive tools for which it is necessary to register and create a user profile. By definition, social networks are based on the network concept: once a user has created a profile, they will seek to connect and establish direct contact with other users. Other social media do not require users to create a profile. Social media are guided by the notion of media and, thus, by a drive to create and disseminate more specific forms of content (on social networks, messages are often short and, if necessary, contain links to more detailed online information). This is the case, for example, with blogs and wikis.

The French project CASDAR AGOR@GRI focuses on social media in the broadest sense, that is, social networks as well as forums, blogs, wikis, and mailing lists. AGOR@GRI focuses on analysing the use of social media to support farmers committed to agroecology. As part of this project, we reviewed the literature on social media use in preventive medicine, with a view to learning from their strengths and limitations and applying this to support farmers and the people who support them in the agroecological transition (Soulignac et al. 2022). Both medicine and agriculture deal with life forms, and digital social media use began earlier in preventive medicine than in agroecology. As no literature review on digital social media practices in agriculture has been carried out prior to the present article, comparing the two fields may therefore offer inspiration for ways to use social media in agriculture. The scientific literature features several analyses of such use. We endeavour here to provide an overview and synthesis of this work. In the following sections, we present the method used for our review of the literature on agriculture. We then outline the main findings in the field of preventive medicine (Soulignac et al., 2022) and the results observed in the more than 20 articles reviewed on social media use in agriculture. Finally, we conduct a critical analysis to determine whether the lessons drawn from preventive medicine can be applied to agriculture. We also examine the role that social media can play in tackling the major challenges faced in agriculture.

## METHOD

To carry out our project, we conducted a literature review and set up a literature watch. We considered all types of agriculture in our document search, as best practices and functionalities identified on social media for conventional agriculture may also find their way into the media used for agroecology. The scope of our work was limited to social media platforms providing technical advice through knowledge sharing between agricultural professionals: farmers, agronomic engineers,
agricultural advisors, teachers, or researchers. In this bibliographical research, we endeavoured to identify the organizations to which the actors belong: cooperatives, retailers, distributors, various types of education organizations, and so on.

Our bibliographic search queries were based on the following parameters:

* only scientific articles identified through Scopus and Web of Science resources

* articles published in the last 10 years

The following keywords were used in the searches:

<Agricultural social media>, <Agricultural social network web 2.0>, <Facebook>, <WhatsApp>, <MySpace>, <Twitter>, <YouTube>, <Second Life>, <LinkedIn>, <Wiki blog>, <Media social agricole>, <Maraichage sur sol vivant>, <Amicumeurs>, <Landfiles>, <OKéleveurs>, <Geco>, <Neayi>, <Farm>, AND <Preventive intervention>, <Prophylaxis agriculture>, <Agroécology>, <Agroecological transition>, <Organic farming>, <Soil conservation agriculture>, <Agroforestry> AND/OR <Community of practice>, <CoPs - VcoPs>, <Farmer>, <Agricultural advisor>, <Researcher>, <Lurker>, <Active participant>, <Contributors>, <Moderators>, <Influencers>, <Peer to peer transmission> AND/OR <Usages>, <Impact & utility>, <Collaboration>, <Relation>, <Education information seeking>, <Experience>, <Information sharing>, <Social interaction>, <Agricultural decision making>.

In our study, we looked at articles focused on digital social media. After checking the relevance of the results produced by our bibliographic search, we selected 21 articles for our literature review. Table 1 lists the articles studied and the associated themes.

<table><caption>Table 1. Subjects of studied articles</caption><thead><tr><td>Articles</td><td>Article themes</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Bastos et al. (2018)</td><td>Twitter, Social networking, American sustainable agriculture, Knowledge, Innovation</td></tr><tr><td>Bliss et al. (2019)</td><td>ICT, Social network, European sustainable agriculture, Knowledge</td></tr><tr><td>Daren et al. (2018)</td><td>Twitter, American agriculture, Disease prevention</td></tr><tr><td>Hawley et al. (2018)</td><td>Social media, Social network, American sustainable agriculture, Innovation</td></tr><tr><td>Inwood et al. (2019)</td><td>ICT, Social networking, Global sustainable agriculture, Sustainable resource management, Knowledge, Software design</td></tr><tr><td>Iwuchukwu et al. (2019)</td><td>Social media, Social network, African agriculture, Agricultural advisory services</td></tr><tr><td>Jayashree (2018)</td><td>Twitter, Social network, Sustainable Indian agriculture, Agricultural advisory services, Research</td></tr><tr><td>Lubel et al. (2018)</td><td>Social media, American sustainable agriculture, Education, Information sciences</td></tr><tr><td>Mills et al. (2019)</td><td>Twitter, Social network, Sustainable agriculture, Sustainable soil management, Knowledge</td></tr><tr><td>Munthali et al. (2018)</td><td>ICT, Social network, African agriculture, Agricultural advisory services, Innovation, Intermediation</td></tr><tr><td>Ooi et al. (2015)</td><td>Blog, Australian agriculture, Agricultural advisory services, Knowledge</td></tr></tbody></table>

continued on following page
<table><caption>Table 1. Continued</caption><thead><tr><td>Articles</td><td>Article themes</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Ortiz-Crespo et al. (2021)</td><td>ICT, Social network, African sustainable agriculture, Agricultural consultancy, Innovation, Intermediation</td></tr><tr><td>Palkova (2016)</td><td>ICT, Social networking, European agriculture, Agricultural advisory services, Knowledge, Virtual reality</td></tr><tr><td>Panagiotopoulos et al. (2017)</td><td>Twitter, British agriculture, Agricultural policy</td></tr><tr><td>Reardon-Smith et al. (2015)</td><td>ICT, Social network, Australian agriculture, Agricultural advisory services, Innovation, Intermediation</td></tr><tr><td>Rust et al. (2022)</td><td>Social media, European sustainable agriculture, Knowledge</td></tr><tr><td>Soulignac et al. (2019)</td><td>ICT, Social network, French sustainable agriculture, Knowledge</td></tr><tr><td>Thakur et al. (2017)</td><td>WhatsApp, Social network, Indian agriculture, Agricultural advisory services</td></tr><tr><td>Welvaert et al. (2017)</td><td>Twitter, Biodiversity watch, Disease prevention</td></tr><tr><td>Wright et al. (2018)</td><td>ICT, Social network, Australian agriculture, Agricultural advisory services</td></tr><tr><td>Zhang et al. (2015)</td><td>ICT, Chinese agriculture, Agricultural advisory services</td></tr></tbody></table>

In order to compare the articles, we wrote profiles, each of which:

* summarized the article,

* identified the community studied,

* identified the type of content shared,

* identified the social media used by the community to interact,

* detailed the work method used for the study,

* presented the main findings and their analysis, and

* interpreted this analysis.

The study of these 21 profiles is presented in the following section.

## OUTLINE OF THE RESULTS OF THE STUDY ON SOCIAL MEDIA IN PREVENTIVE MEDICINE

It is interesting to see the parallels between the results of this study on agriculture and findings in other fields. We thus consider here an earlier study that we carried out on preventive medicine (Soulignac et al., 2022), a field in which social media are used to disseminate knowledge to the general public in order to prevent disease. Social media are also used for discussions between peers (patients) and between patients and the medical profession. In Soulignac et al. (2022), we also pointed out that a parallel could be drawn between preventive medicine and the agroecological transition. In descending order, the social media most frequently cited in preventive medicine are as follows: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, WhatsApp, LinkedIn. Our literature review on preventive medicine identified six major themes. We borrowed the basic framework of the classification of these themes for our present study on agriculture.

The number of preventive medicine articles dealing with each of these themes is shown below. This bibliography pointed to the following (Soulignac et al., 2022):
* Building a social medium (four articles): Best practices for building a social medium concern the person developing the tool. Knowledge of the target audience and its expectations is a prerequisite. The basic rule is to listen to one's future users. The medium must be built with them. Future users must at least understand the building stages and ideally validate them. The medium must be easy to use. The content must be tailored to their vocabulary and cultural codes. The application must have responsive design, that is, it must adapt to the different dimensions of mobile phone, tablet, and computer screens.

* Properly using a social medium (15 articles): The large number of articles shows that the proper use of a social medium is not self-evident. Users need to learn how to manage this medium within their professional organization and/or private life. To do so, they first have to identify the level of technical expertise required and ask themselves whether the effort required to fully grasp the application is commensurate with the expected benefits. But they also need to measure the reliability of the content published by assessing the credibility of its authors, be they legal entities and/or individuals. Social media complement one another; they sometimes compete with and sometimes complement other ways of producing and disseminating knowledge. Choosing the right social media and using them in conjunction with other tools is essential to maximize the overall effectiveness of prevention messages. It may also be in the user's professional interest, as a form of recognition, to shift from the status of lurker, whereby the user simply consumes the content, to the status of content contributor.

* Building one's digital image (four articles): This is achieved by developing knowledge of the social medium used. Several points need to be monitored, such as (a) private/public access to the medium and (b) interactions between its members and the consequences that these interactions may have on one's career path. Once a user has chosen their medium, they should take the time to create a profile and a personal page. These must be credible in the eyes of their peers and other users. Accessing media for private use can have professional consequences. To ensure that this type of use is not detrimental to their job, workers have the choice between anonymizing their accounts, limiting the visibility of content to those close to them, or carefully managing their personal content.

* Carrying out effective prevention (three articles): This effectiveness hinges on the production of content that is interesting and useful for prevention. Inter-professional interactions optimize discourse if they provide complementary, context-dependent perspectives on prevention methods. Patients' testimonials and their discussions with one another or with the medical profession reflect popular concerns and are enriched by feedback or academic discourse. The presence of moderators encourages constructive and positive discussions. They can also help foster debate on unresolved or even sensitive issues.

* Creating knowledge from a social medium (four articles): Several methods have been put forward. There is always the possibility of analysing the data hosted on a social medium using big-data exploration and analysis techniques. A more qualitative approach is also possible, in which case the user should make sure to be familiar with the tool's sorting and search functionalities. Finally, monitoring influencers, user surveys and, in the case of sensitive subjects, anonymous feedback from volunteers can be productive.

* Enabling learning (two articles): To enable learning to occur, the following steps need to be followed: (a) enable the creation of closed communities/groups by creating a climate of trust and confidentiality, (b) identify the learning methods preferred by learners, and (c) encourage interaction wherever possible.

Based on the 30 or so preventive medicine articles studied and the six themes outlined above, we have reformulated five related issues tailored to agriculture (see Table 2).
<table><caption>Table 2. Themes addressed in medicine versus agriculture</caption><thead><tr><td>Themes in medicine</td><td>Themes in agriculture</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Building a social medium (four articles)</td><td>Building a social medium to support farm management and transitions in practices</td></tr><tr><td>Properly using a social medium (15 articles) from a user perspective</td><td>Properly using a social medium in the agricultural world from a user perspective</td></tr><tr><td>Building one's digital image (four articles)</td><td>Developing one's digital identity and credibility in the agricultural world</td></tr><tr><td>Carrying out effective prevention (three articles)</td><td>Facilitating social media in agriculture to enhance their utility for best practices</td></tr><tr><td>Creating knowledge from a social medium (four articles)</td><td>Strengthening interactions both between peers and between farmers, advisors, and researchers to enable knowledge creation, management, and learning.</td></tr><tr><td>Enabling learning (two articles)</td><td></td></tr></tbody></table>

## RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The 21 articles on agriculture provided us with a range of information on subjects including social media access, typology, content and uses.

### Types of Agriculture

These articles span different continents. Europe (five articles), North America (four articles), Australia (four articles), Africa (three articles) and Asia (two articles) are studied, covering diverse types of farming and contexts of use. For several years now, the digital revolution has been spreading to the world of agriculture, including in the least economically developed countries, thanks to mobile phones and despite the slower spread of Internet in those countries (Peyroux et al., 2019). The articles include work on both sustainable and conventional agriculture. Social media are therefore not used solely in agroecology, even though their use is highly relevant to this field.

### The Most-Used Social Media and Tools

Social media can be accessed using two main types of device: smartphones and computers. Farmers worldwide use mobile phones. In the most developed countries, computers can also be used. But the success of mobile phones can be attributed to their many benefits. By definition, they are portable and, as long as there is an Internet connection, they enable widespread access to social media and their services. The immediacy of interaction thus combines with ubiquitous use, particularly out in the fields. With their multiple functionalities, smartphones can serve to tackle issues on the ground. Moreover, investing in a (basic) smartphone is cheap compared to the cost of a computer. Farmers are thus adopting mobile phones on a massive scale, for economic reasons and owing to their portability, the multiple purposes they serve (telephony, Internet, camera/photos, etc.), and their relative user-friendliness. As a result, smartphones have enabled the universal use of social media.

The articles in our literature review study a diverse range of social media. As many are generalist, they are potentially available in all countries. Eight articles also discuss applications specifically developed for a local or national context. The generalist applications were developed by the web giants, particularly GAFAM. Unlike specific applications, they do not require any investment from public authorities. The hierarchy of generalist tools already used online is also discussed in three articles, with one focusing on Nigeria and two on the United States. We summarize these three hierarchies of use in Table 3. In this respect, note the importance of Facebook, which also owns WhatsApp and Instagram. Moreover, Facebook and Twitter are popular applications that are clearly the social media most used in agriculture. This finding converges with the observations in our study on the use of
social media in preventive medicine (Soulignac et al., 2022). It is important to note, however, that some of the tools mentioned are banned in a few countries, such as China.

<table><caption>Table 3. Hierarchy of social media use</caption><thead><tr><th>Article</th><th>Iwuchukwu et al. (2019)</th><th>Lubell et al. (2018)</th><th>Hawley et al. (2018)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><th>Region</th><td>Nigeria</td><td>United States</td><td>United States</td></tr><tr><th>Hierarchy of social media by use</th><td>Facebook, WhatsApp</td><td>Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest</td><td>Facebook (88%), Twitter (68%), Video (YouTube, Vimeo) (68%), Podcast (66%), LinkedIn (62%), Blog (34%), Instagram (31%), Pinterest (8%)</td></tr></tbody></table>

The following are some of the characteristics of Facebook and Twitter, the two media we found most frequently in the articles reviewed:

* Facebook is a medium where users can easily tell their professional or private stories. They are provided with the space to do so. They can also choose whether or not to make their posts public, which makes it easier to keep their private and public spaces separate. Facebook can also be used for project facilitation. It is an effective tool for passing on knowledge to targeted groups of farmers. However, it does not facilitate knowledge storage, structuring, and searching in the way that Twitter does.

* Twitter informs its followers instantly, given the limited nature of a tweet. Moreover, grouping tweets by hashtag makes it easier to aggregate information by subject. Their content consists of a short text, photos, videos, emoticons, and links to other cognitive resources such as wikis. In this way, Twitter differs from a wiki tool, which is also very well-structured, but far more voluble. The ease with which users can share their opinions enriches one's perspective with a diverse range of points of view. Information monitoring on Twitter is therefore effective. The potentially more gamified and interactive nature of tweets also makes their content more appealing. These interactions can have a social dimension, and can even involve encouragements, for example. Finally, Twitter's ease of use on smartphones is also appreciated.

Many Internet users actually seek not necessarily interaction on social media but rather information or contacts. Interactions take place more easily on Facebook and Twitter, both platforms that generate intense social networking. These networks are made up of legal entities as well as individuals. However, Twitter is more open, for users have to appropriate fewer social codes than on Facebook, and as Twitter users are easily identifiable, it is easier for them to connect to one another. Twitter, therefore, can more effectively transcend geographical and social barriers. For example, on Twitter, farmers can quickly get in touch with researchers. Facebook builds a universe that is more focused on those close to the user, either geographically or around a project.

## Themes Covered

In our literature review on the use of social media in preventive medicine, we identified five themes that could potentially be tackled through social media in agriculture, summarized in Table 2. We discuss each of these five themes below.
Building a Social Medium to Support One's Popularity in the Farming World

As we have seen, these social media can be generalist or specific. Nine articles address the theme of specific applications: Bastos et al. (2018), Campbell et al. (2015), Inwood et al. (2019), Munthali et al. (2018), Ooi et al. (2015), Ortiz-Crespo et al. (2021), Palkova (2016), Soulignac et al. (2019), and Zhang et al. (2015).

Great hopes have been placed on social media for peer group facilitation in agriculture. Local knowledge is increasingly seen as decisive, particularly for the development of types of farming considered as agroecological. The development of specific applications must therefore follow a few key requirements. It must be based on the needs of users, including both agricultural advisors and farmers, and the application will act as an intermediary between actors. It must allow for multi-directional knowledge sharing, in other words knowledge must be transferable both to and from the application. The application can, however, be centralized at national level if its content is specialized and populated by scientists. In this case, featuring feedback from farmers can make it possible to achieve the middle-up-down-management dear to Nonaka (1994), that is, to compare the knowledge of specialists with that of practitioners.

The application can accept several content formats, including photos and short videos. Given the growing use of mobile phones in the agricultural world, it is clear that the “responsive design” of an application—in other words its adaptation to all screen types—is strategic. Finally, the development of a social medium must take into account the characteristics of the region in which it is distributed: the technical environment, the extent of Internet coverage, and the social and institutional environment.

Our review paid little attention to the tool-building stage. Yet the development of a specific tool is always a long, costly, and risky process. Success is not always guaranteed, even if it is at least clear that a successful IT tool is one that is both useful and simple to use. One explanation for this is that users are reluctant to use a new tool and change their habits. As a result, the skills required to use new tools are scarce. Competition between farming organizations complicates institutional alignment and the establishment of effective governance. Moreover, tool building often involves a public/private partnership, with the public partner providing the project management and funding and the private partner handling IT development. The project owner must be able to sort through the various user demands and also be able to imagine and propose relevant functionalities. This co-construction is not always straightforward, as power struggles and vested interests, as well as incompetence, can get in the way. The “free” use of standard platforms, which are often already well-known or even popular among actors in the field, can provide a solution to avoid the major risk involved in building a specific application. Many of the research projects presented here were developed in this way in the field. However, this practice also has a (major) risk, namely that of increasing the agricultural world’s dependence on the Internet giants, particularly in terms of the use of the data shared. This constraint points to the need to develop not so much new applications as new uses for general applications that are more respectful of the rights of Internet users.

One of the motivations for social media initiatives is the time/money saving compared to running in-person meetings, which also involves organizational logistics. Although this is a legitimate proposition, as with tools developed in a virtual world, decision makers still must assess the time/ money spent on building the tool and on running it. This assessment is necessary before committing to a social media project that may be innovative but has an uncertain outcome. Still, in many cases, the use of social media proves to reduce the transaction cost of agricultural advice. Digital tools such as videoconferencing and MOOCs are also digital alternatives to explore.

Properly Using Social Media in the Agricultural World From a User Perspective

This theme is addressed in 11 publications: Bliss et al. (2019), Hawley et al. (2018), Iwuchukwu et al. (2019), Lubell et al. (2018), Mills et al. (2019), Mueller et al. (2018), Munthali et al. (2018), Ortiz-Crespo et al. (2021), Stankovics et al. (2022), Welvaert et al. (2017), and Wright et al. (2018).
These publications confirm the relevance of social media as a tool for disseminating agricultural knowledge. Digital interactions between actors enable feedback, the cross-fertilization of ideas, and learning of relevant knowledge that is sometimes difficult to access. For farmers, it is still important to meet with their peers to share experiences and knowledge and to think about how to apply new ideas within their local contexts. Online platforms and forums should be expected not to replace in-person knowledge sharing but rather to complement it.

The use of social media in the field can give farmers immediate access to procedural knowledge (i.e. knowledge of how things work), which is useful in the moment. Other uses are possible, such as monitoring the geographical spread of pests in order to optimize farmers' preventive practices. This use extends farmers' field of observation beyond their farm. Social media are also a source of information for farmers, for example on food prices, to help them sell their produce more profitably.

Quick access to a more diverse and distant audience is one of the main perceived benefits of ICTs. These tools facilitate some of the agricultural extension tasks performed by agricultural advisors.

## Developing One's Digital Identity and Credibility in the Agricultural World

No article mentions this theme in the context of agriculture. However, four articles in our literature review on the interaction between preventive medicine and social media do touch on it. The credibility of healthcare professionals is admittedly closely scrutinized; it is, therefore, in their interest to have a well-built digital identity as they produce information on the Web. The image of farmers may appear less strategic. However, technical discussions between farmers require not only a precise definition of the context in which they are operating but also that each party have a good reputation in order to create a climate of trust and legitimize what they are saying (they are competent and they know what they are talking about because they have been applying this practice on their farm for a long time). Moreover, at national level, a farmer's image affects their ability to put pressure on public policy makers and defend a representation of agriculture and farmers that is sometimes a source of controversy. On a more local scale, it can be of interest to legal entities such as cooperatives or farms to invest in a multimedia tool to market their products. These tools are increasingly accessible to very small businesses (Mathé, 2016). Farmers need to tell a story about their business and their products that will appeal to potential consumers. But this story must be consistent with the other digital traces, including private ones, left by these same actors online. Finally, there is a new player in these short supply chains, namely the consumer, whose ratings and comments can be either stimulating or devastating. The promises conveyed by one's digital image must therefore be consistent with real life experience.

## Facilitating Agricultural Social Media to Increase the Utility of Content

Fourteen papers address the theme of facilitation: Bliss et al. (2019), Iwuchukwu et al. (2019), Lubell et al. (2018), Mills et al. (2019), Mueller et al. (2018), Munthali et al. (2018), Ooi et al. (2015), Ortiz-Crespo et al. (2021), Palkova (2016), Panagiotopoulos et al. (2017), Reardon-Smith et al. (2015), Thakur et al. (2017), Wright et al. (2018), and Zhang et al. (2015).

Agricultural actors need to choose the right tools based on their objectives: for example, to develop projects, an agricultural adviser will choose Facebook; to publicize their scientific work, a researcher will post on Twitter; and for the extension of best practices in Africa, an agricultural organization will use WhatsApp. On Twitter, the choice of hashtags is decisive in attracting the targeted audience.

A facilitator needs to know their audience well, and may consider using several channels to reach it. A relationship of trust is needed. The media used should present content that is both useful and easy to understand. Including photos and short videos helps to make content understandable. If it is well thought out, the structured organization of this content around standard questions and answers will make life easier for agricultural advisors and farmers. A summary is always helpful, along with the necessary reference to more in-depth content. If ongoing discussions are preferred, it is worth thinking about capitalizing on some of the content in the form of a wiki. The facilitator can also play
a moderating role to ensure that, at the very least, discussions remain civil and to control any spillover between professional and private life.

Many facilitators are agricultural advisors from private, cooperative, or public organizations. These agricultural advisors are aware of the challenges associated with the use of social media, including the complexity of their use and their potential for misinformation. Clear support from their hierarchy, a community of practice of farm advisors surrounding ICT use, and finally knowledge validation processes are all means to address these challenges. On this last point, the type of governance of tools chosen is important for ensuring the reliability of the content shared.

Videoconferencing also helps to improve organization, whenever technically possible and socially acceptable. It furthermore has the benefit of combining verbal interaction with written comments to ensure that everyone can express themselves. For videoconferencing to be effective, the facilitator needs to find the right balance between in-person meetings, videoconferencing, and the use of social media.

Finally, for farmers, meetings in fields with their peers remain important to share experiences and knowledge and reflect on the application of new ideas in their local context. Moreover, on certain topics, senses that are inaccessible through social media can be mobilized in the field, such as touch and smell. The sense of sight is also used far more effectively. In-person conversations are often preferred for strategic decision making, whereas online interactions are more suitable for addressing tactical questions (treatment dates, choice of equipment, etc.).

Governance from outside farms is not always necessary for social media facilitation. More informal, self-organized farmer initiatives involving standard virtual platforms such as WhatsApp complement their interactions.

Additionally, public authorities can explore the content on social media to extract relevant information on both public policy and current affairs. It is nevertheless important to ensure that this activity respects privacy rights. The aim is not to set up systematic surveillance. At the very least, these studies should build in anonymity and/or contributors' consent to their content being shared.

*Strengthening the Ties Between Farmers, Advisors, Teachers, and Researchers to Enable Knowledge Creation, Management, and Learning*

The 14 publications listed below address this fifth theme: Bastos et al. (2018), Bliss et al. (2019), Hawley et al. (2018), Inwood et al. (2019), Iwuchukwu et al. (2019), Jayashree (2018), Mills et al. (2019), Munthali et al. (2018), Ortiz-Crespo et al. (2021), Palkova (2016), Reardon-Smith et al., 2015), Soulignac et al. (2019), Thakur (2017), and Wright et al. (2018).

Social media multiply the opportunities for everyone to interact. In particular, they encourage the sharing of feedback with those new to farming and the dissemination of best practices. On another level, they facilitate dialogue with society.

The relational networks that emerge from social networks often follow or are articulated with those developed in-person, which they simply reproduce or complement. However, platforms such as Twitter allow for these social networks to extend beyond their immediate circle of contacts, which is a source of potential enrichment. Social media thus foster innovative practices. Farmers also like to get together without institutional or social control. They are able to influence one another because they trust their peers first and foremost. However, this dynamic is limited by the lack of interaction with the other actors of the agricultural knowledge management system.

The Semantic Web offers innovative prospects that are still poorly understood and barely exploited by the agricultural community. The Semantic Web describes the world with a string of triplets like `<Actor or object> <Has a relationship> <With another actor or object>`. This descriptive mode allows for precise Actors/object links to be established. In agriculture, when the Semantic Web has become widespread, computer queries of several social media will make it possible to instantly create virtual communities around relevant actors (researchers, farmers, agricultural advisors, etc.) on a given issue.
CONCLUSION

This article presents a literature review of analyses of the use of digital social media for agriculture. It gives the reader an idea of the different subjects addressed by social media analyses carried out in this field. The study covers 21 articles published since 2015. As technologies in these areas are evolving very rapidly, we did not select older articles. We identified the types of agriculture concerned, the technologies used, the countries concerned, and the themes addressed. We also drew parallels with a study that we previously carried out in another field: preventive medicine. We were able to use the same classification of themes as in that study.

Digital social media have grown exponentially over the last 10 years, with users currently numbering in the billions. They are now embedded in everyday habits, and there is no doubt that they will continue to play an increasingly important role in society in the years to come, in both personal and professional environments. As farming practices involve a long and costly validation period, we believe that the use of social media in agriculture will continue to develop. Interaction via networks is all the more crucial in the context of the agroecological transition, where breakthrough crop monitoring methods are being proposed.

The subject of this article will need to be revisited regularly to understand new trends in the use of social media in agriculture. We assume that more and more of these networks will be analysed in this sector. Should we repeat the same study in a few years' time, the media landscape will in all likelihood be different. It would be interesting, for example, to see how TikTok will evolve in the near future and be used by those involved in agriculture. The form that media take will evolve with information and communication technologies. Analyses of practices in metaverses (like that of Meta) might also be necessary, although this will depend on the success of this type of media in the years to come.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

We wish to confirm that there are no known conflicts of interest associated with this publication
and there has been no significant financial support for this work that could have influenced its outcome.

FUNDING STATEMENT

This research was supported by the CASDAR (Compte d'Affectation Spécial Développement Agricole et Rural) of the French Ministry of Agriculture and Food. The AGOR@GRI stakeholders are ACTA, Idele, INRAE LISIS, INRAE TSCF, ITAB, CDA Dordogne, CRA Bretagne, CRA Normandie, Pôle AB Massif-Central, and Université de Bretagne Occidentale.

PROCESS DATES

Received: February 12, 2024, Revision: September 13, 2024, Accepted: December 9, 2024

CORRESPONDING AUTHOR

Correspondence should be addressed to Francois Pinet; francois.pinet@irstea.fr
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Vincent Soulignac is a researcher at the French Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (Clermont Ferrand, France). His field of research is in knowledge management and sharing.

François Pinet is a research director at the French Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (Clermont Ferrand, France). His field of research is in environmental information systems. He belongs to several scientific committees of different conferences and journals in these fields.

Mathilde Bodelet was an engineer in agronomy working on projects on knowledge sharing at the French Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (Clermont Ferrand, France).

Hélène Gross is in charge of biodiversity and agroecology projects at ACTA, France. She is at the head of impact and open innovation pole.