Abstract
The emergence, popularity and ubiquity of the social media have
created enormous potential and impact in many spheres of life in
Nigeria. This has been amply demonstrated in all the stages of the 2015
elections in Nigeria. This study focused on the influence of the social
media on political engagement with the electorate during 2015
Nigerian presidential election campaign. The research design adopted
is survey through 2304 questionnaires distributed across the selected
city, in each state and in each of the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria,
while 2054 copies, representing 89.1% are found usable. The sampling
techniques used are multi-stage sampling and simple random
sampling techniques. One of the key findings of the research is that the
respondents through the social media engagement with the two
leading candidates and their respective political president Goodluck
Jonathan (PDP) and General Muhammadu Buhari (APC), rated them
on some core campaign issues like corruption, insecurity, education,
health, and infrastructure, among others. The study however
recommends that presidential candidates and their respective political
parties should hire experts in marketing communication who can
manage their social media accounts so that political engagement on the
social media should not degenerate to personality attacks, as was
evident during the campaign.
Barikui Nnaane. (2014) Influence of the social media on political engagement with the electorate during the 2015 presidential election campaign in Nigeria Barikui Nnaane, Journal of Media Studies, Volume 29, Issue 2.
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