Facebook was used to spread messages of violence at the beginning of the crisis in December, a survey on the use of social media has found.

In the survey conducted by the Community Empowerment for Progress, 2,500 persons were asked to make discussions with two friends on peace and violence.

It was found that 60% of the Facebook users were exaggerating the ethnic dimension of the conflict.

“We have come out with the statistics that we have seen over 60% of facebook users have shifted to a negative trend,” said Edmond Yakani, CEPO’s Executive Director.

He said the users spreading negative messages increased to 71% as the crisis continued.

However, the survey found that the users shifted to discussing peace when the IGAD mediation process started.

Mr Edmond said 71% of the users started using Facebook to discuss governance issues in South Sudan.

He said that Facebook was however used to promote dialogue among the citizens.

“When there is a total crackdown of the media, the only platform that is able to create a dialogue between citizens is Facebook,” Mr Yakani continued.

“That means that if Facebook users tend to send positive messages, tend to send strong peace building messages, the violence may be reducing.”

The survey also found out that three quarters of the Facebook accounts were used to spread false information by a small group of users who pretended to be representing their communities.