Social Media And Democratic Elections In Nigeria

Social Media And Democratic Elections In Nigeria

Abstract

This study anatomized how online news media covered the 2015 presidential election in Nigeria. The end is to establish the position of attention different parties entered, depiction of the parties and direction of reports. Three online media Viz Sahara journalists, overlook news and Premium Times were intentionally named. The period of the study was 1st January to 27th March 2015. A aggregate of three hundred and twenty- three( 323) particulars( news and point papers) that touched on the 2015 presidential election were generated through Google hunt and websites of the three media. One hundred and sixty nine( 169) particulars were aimlessly named as the sample size. Data were anatomized using frequentness and simple probabilities. Findings revealed that PDP and APC entered utmost attention from the media with PDP having the loftiest number of reports. Away the two parties, all the remaining parties were substantially insurmountable in the reports published by the media during the period studied. It was also discovered that the media were more interested in conflict related matters than issues like namer’s education. Among other recommendations made, the experimenter called on government communication nonsupervisory bodies to organize special factory for online intelligencers on issues of ethics and responsible practice while legal and technological strategies need to be designed to dock surpluses of online intelligencers.