Social Media and Student Awareness of University Blood Donation Drives: Evidence from Mount Kenya University, Kenya

Purpose: Blood donation drives are increasingly promoted through social media, yet little is known about how effectively these platforms build awareness among university students in Kenya. This paper examined the level of student awareness of blood donation drives promoted through social media at Mount Kenya University (MKU), Thika Campus. Methodology: A cross-sectional survey was administered to a stratified random sample of undergraduate students drawn from the university's nine academic faculties, yielding 348 valid responses from a target of 378 (a 92.1% response rate); semi-structured interviews with a purposively selected subset provided corroborating qualitative insight. Awareness was measured on a four-item Likert scale covering general awareness, social media as a first source of information, frequency of exposure, and the perceived importance of social media for spreading donation-related information. Findings: Students reported a moderate level of general awareness (M = 3.57, SD = 1.39) and infrequent exposure to donation-related content (M = 3.20, SD = 1.40), despite strongly endorsing social media's value as an information channel (M = 4.17, SD = 1.22). Awareness correlated weakly and negatively with age (r = -.110, p < .05) and weakly and positively with social media engagement (r = .119, p < .05), but bore no significant relationship with actual participation in donation drives (r = .058, p = .283). The study concluded that awareness of blood donation drives among university students is real but shallow and unevenly reinforced Unique Contribution to Theory Practice and Policy: The study recommended that universities replace episodic, health-club-driven promotion with sustained, mainstream institutional communication to close the gap between students' perceived usefulness of social media and their actual exposure to donation content.