INTERVENTION COMMUNICATION STRATEGY: BOOSTING FIGHT AGAINST DRUG ABUSE AMONG NIGERIAN YOUTH THROUGH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE GENERATED MEMES ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Abstract

Drug abuse among youths in Nigeria is a serious problem that requires a comprehensive and integrated approach to reduce its rate. Studies have confirmed social media as avenues to spread of drug abuse. It then becomes logical that if it spreads the menace, then it has the capabilities of combating same. Hence, social media content, such as memes, can become a mechanism to enforce or boost narratives about combating drug abuse with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) standing at the forefront of modern technology, offering transformative solutions across various sectors including visual communication. This study set out to determine how the use of AI generated memes on social media can be adapted in the struggle to curtail drug abuse among Nigerian youth. It is hinged on technological determinism theory and relies on secondary data for desktop research. Insights from this study indicate that with the available AI meme generators, social media provide valuable platforms for delivering communication interventions to reduce vulnerability to drug abuse through AI generated memes. In order to achieve this, memes must fulfill fundamental characteristics, that is, they must be interpretable, relatable, memorable, informative, educative, numerous, and persistent over time and they are able to reach millions of people in just seconds through rapid virality, often legitimized by the users themselves, making them one of the most powerful and effective modern intervention communication tools