Don wins Sh5m grant to study how Facebook helps fight crime

A Moi University lecturer, Dr Duncan Omanga has won a Ksh 5 million (US$ 50,000) grant in the inaugural Facebook Research Award, under the Facebook Protect and Care Research projects.

Dr Omanga was the only successful candidate from Africa in a global competitive process in which the Social media giant seeks to find out how the platform has embedded the complex lives of its users, the university says.

Dr Omanga, who heads the Department of Publishing and Media Studies, School of Information Sciences, will use the grant to run a project in 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.

Security agents have been using Facebook to identify, locate and warn criminals in the Eastlands part of Nairobi, with one of them going by the name Hessy wa Kayole/Dandora. He usually posts photos of criminals that police are hunting for as well as those that have been killed.

The research award  includes a possibility to work with selected graduate students, and a visit to the Menlo Park, California, the headquarters of the social media giant, Facebook.

Dr Omanga holds a PhD in Media Studies from University of Bayreuth, Germany, Master of Philosophy (Communication Studies) from Moi University and a Bachelor of Education degree from Maseno University. 

Dr Omanga has been a columnist at the The Daily Nation and currently writes for The Standard newspaper. He is also the author of the book, Media and Terrorism: Editorial Cartoons and Framing of Terrorism in Kenya in addition to several academic publications.

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The Facebook Protect and Care research project studies human behavior and their interaction with technology in a bid to make social media spaces safer. The Facebook Research Awards invites academics to apply for research grants to address specific challenges in areas of interest to Facebook.

At Moi University, he teaches undergraduate, postgraduate courses (both MA and Doctoral) in Media Theory, Newmedia, Sociology of News, African Media Systems, Writing for the Media, Research Methods inthe Media, and Radio in Africa among other media and journalism courses.