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Elections And Social Media In Nigeria
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CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the study
Social
media sites, applications and packages each targets a specific different
audience, and uses different tools to allow people to share ideas,
videos, photos, links and chats, and to form networks of people
connected by common interests. The increasing number of social media
users has attracted the attention of even the business sectors to the
extent that they now include social media or internet advertising to
their marketing plans, due to social media's targeting capabilities and
its less expensive nature unlike the mass media. The realization of the
relevance of social media is not just limited to the commercial sector
which sees it as an avenue for market expansion and sales promotion, but
also to the political sector, whereby politicians employ it as a tool
for political campaigns and policies dissemination, while the
electorates use it as medium for political participation.
With
millions joining the conversation from all over the country, social
media sites are now effective way for politicians to reach their
constituents. In the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election, then Senator
Barack Obama used social media to engage and empower his volunteers,
raising millions of dollars online. His campaign was not the first to
use the internet to engage and raise funds, but it was the first to do
so with that level of success, and it is clear their work transferred
into actual votes. Unlike the traditional media campaigns they are
usually very expensive, investigations have shown social media to be a
very cheap medium for reaching out to the electorates. It has grown to
be a necessity in all forms of political campaigns, ensuring ease in the
dissemination of information and maintaining of candidates-electorates
relationship until the elections and even after. The successful outcome
of implementation of the social media in U.S.A 2008 presidential
election has engineered a kind of political social media revolution
across the globe and this development has caused politicians from
different parts of world, including Nigeria to borrow a leaf from
America's experience. Now social media campaign has become an integral
attribute of modern day politics.
Democracy is widely acknowledged as
the best form of government in most parts of the world today.
Elections, which represent the most modern and universally accepted
process through which individuals are chosen to represent a body or
community in a larger entity or government is one of the cardinal
features of democracy. This is so because in a democracy, the authority
of the government derives from the consent of the governed. This is
perhaps why democracy is commonly referred to as the government of the
people by the people and for the people. Usually, a democratic election
would characteristically be competitive, periodic, inclusive, definitive
and free and fair. Nigeria’s democracy may be considered nascent when
compared to the older democracies of the western world. Be that as it
may, the 2011 general elections have gone down in the history of the
country as one of the best elections in the last few years of
uninterrupted civilian rule in the land. It was observed that one
remarkable thing about the 2011 general elections was the adoption of
social media, especially the Facebook by the politicians, the political
parties and the electorates as a platform for political participation.
The importance attached to social media in the 2011 general elections
was better explained by President Goodluck Jonathan's decision to
declare his intention to run for the highest political office in the
land, on Facebook. Jonathan had on Wednesday, September 15, 2010
informed his 217,000 fans on the world’s most popular networking
platform (Facebook) of his intent; 24 hours later, 4,000 more fans
joined his page, and by the day of the election, on 16 April 2011, he
had over half a million followers. His closest rivals – Alhaji Mohammed
Buhari of the CPC, Nuhu Ribadu of the ACN and Alhaji Shakarau of the
ANPP were also among those that made heavy presence on Facebook and
other social media platforms. In addition to the approximately 3 million
registered Nigerians on Facebook and 60,000 on Twitter, almost every
institution involved in Nigeria's elections conducted an aggressive
social networking outreach, including the Independent National Electoral
Commission (INEC), political parties, candidates, media houses, civil
society groups and even the police. Apart from the presidential
candidates, many governorship aspirants, Senatorial and House of
Assembly seat contenders from the various states of the federation also
embarked on aggressive use of social media platforms especially the
Facebook to disseminate their political messages, woo electorates and
support groups towards the actualization of their goals. Before the
advent of the new media, the older or conventional media – radio,
television, newspapers, magazines, etc, ruled the world, and had
directly or indirectly blocked popular participation in the electoral
process. This is because there has always been scarcity of space and
airtime given by the conventional media to the citizens to have their
say in politics, governance and in the electoral process. Conventional
media critics believe that voters were left with paid political
propaganda containing only meaningless slogans, making them
disinterested and cynical about politics. They argue that there is
absence of serious debate in the conventional media that could make
people to learn the substance of issues and policies proposals as well
as related arguments, and that this disallows citizens from
participating actively in political discourse. Meanwhile, social media
is interactive, web-based media. They belong to the new genre of media
that focus on social networking, allowing users to express themselves,
interact with friends, share personal information, as well as publish
their own views on the internet. The ubiquitous access of these online
devices no doubt, has democratizing effects as they offer citizens
opportunities for more fully engagement in the political process.
Writing on this development, (Madueke et al 2015), in his paper Life in
the Age of Self-Assembling message observes that: The value of the
communication experience has undergone a sea-change; from the need to
share it, to the need to share in it. Technology and social media in
particular have brought power back to the people; with such
technologies, established authorities are now undermined and users are
now the experts. This implies that people can now consume media as
wanted and needed rather than allowing media producers to schedule
consumption time and content. A person can now communicate to anywhere
from any place at any time. Again, using social media is less expensive
than the outrageous political advertisements on the older media. The new
media is flexible, accessible and affordable. They promote
democratization of media, alter the meaning of geographic distance, and
allow for increase in the volume and speed of communication. They are
portable due to the mobile nature; they are interactive and open to all.
Nigeria experimented the use of this technology for political discourse
during the 2011 general elections. The platform gave voice to many
Nigerian politicians and electorates alike to make their voice heard in
the electoral process. With the successful implementation of the social
media in the 2011 general elections, the stake of prominence of social
media in Nigeria has drastically gone up, thus in this work interest is
on exposing how the political parties of APC and PDP alongside their
candidates, implemented the social media in their quests for the
position of the President in the 2015 elections and on how such
implementations impacted on the outcome of the elections for the
position of the President.
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ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]Elections in Nigeria prior to 2011, were characterized by high level of propaganda, dissemination of fake and uncoordinated information, scarcity of airtime and space for citizen’s participation and other forms of traditional media fostered electoral prejudices. Electorates were at the mercy of the tradition media; Television, Radio, Newspaper, Magazines, etc. to interact with their candidates. The wide gap that existed between the electorates and the candidates denied them their rights t ... Continue reading---
