Suchergebnisse

This article is a study of the influence of social media on political participation of youths in Nigeria through a review of the methodology, research themes and theoretical trends. The research method was a content analysis of forty-four relevant empirical articles. Findings showed that the predominant themes were political participation, social media and ethnicity. Most of the reviewed studies employed surveys, desktop research or critical review of literature as their research method. Most reviewed studies either adopted quantitative or qualitative research method and without a theoretical framework. It was evident that many studies in the global north did not link political participation to ethnicity, unlike those that were carried out in Nigeria. In addition, there were few studies on the influence of social media on the political participation of youths. Consequently, research in this area has to contextualize the Nigerian experience, adopt a triangulation of quantitative and qualitative research methods with a strong theoretical base.

Social media is becoming increasingly important as a means for social engagement. In Nigeria, Twitter is employed to convey opinion and make commentary on matters ranging from football to politics. Tweets are also used to inform, advocate, recruit and even incite. Previous studies have shown that Twitter could be effective for political mobilization. However, there is dearth of research on how Twitter has been used as a purveyor of neutral and/or hate speech in the Nigerian context. This study examined the nature of tweets in the immediate aftermath of the 2015 presidential election in Nigeria. The authors employed content analysis of 250 purposively selected tweets from the #Igbo hashtag which trended between March 29 and 31, 2015. The tweets were then categorized into five explicit hate and one neutral tweet category respectively. Results revealed the dominance of three hate tweet types: derogatory, mocking and blaming. These findings were then discussed bearing in mind earlier theories on the functionality of tweets and voting patterns from an analysis of the election results.