Abstract:
On Facebook, online social media groups make it possible to find and share health,
educational, economic, and social-related information, as well as to discover social
help by communicating with those that are dealing with the same problem or
condition. Little is known about Guidance services provided with Facebook for
emotional contact. The goal of this qualitative ethnographic study was to explore how
guidance services are delivered in the virtual space via Facebook groups. The research
questions focused on how people access guidance services on Facebook groups, why
people access guidance services from Facebook groups, what forms of guidance
services are accessed on Facebook groups and how effective are these services
rendered on Facebook groups? A quota sampling technique was used, a semistructured
online interview with four Popular Facebook groups named, Tell it All,
Tell it Mum, Trotro Diaries and Abena Manokekame was used for the study, using 20
participants for the interview and 4 extracts from Facebook platforms, the data from
the interviews were coded and categorized in inductive thematic analysis. The
findings shows that all guidance services such as appraisals, consultations,
information, placement, follow-up, orientation and referrals are provided on the
various Facebook platforms. Also due to the number of comical postings and
entertaining comments, virtual groups on Facebook use that as avenues to de-stress
themselves when they are stressed out. Since majority of people who get access to
these platforms were invited by friends and are also ready to recommend their
platforms to others, then it means online guidance has come to stay, so, the researcher
recommend that Ghana Psychological Association encourage its members to create
such platforms using their members to assist people, Conveniently, people prefer
seeking help from Facebook groups and due to that , The researcher recommend that ,
online and Face-to-face guidance services should go far to assist people irrespective
of where they stay, in terms of providing assistance, professional counsellors should
not narrow themselves to institutions such as churches and schools but should instead
focus their efforts on the virtual community, as most people are now attached to social
media.
Description:
A thesis in the Department of Counselling Psychology,
Faculty of Educational Studies submitted to the school of
Graduate Studies, in partial fulfilment
of the requirements for the award of the degree of
Master of philosophy
(Guidance And Counselling)
in the University of Education, Winneba
MARCH, 2022