Political Parties and the Matrix of Social Media War in Nigeria

Abstract

The use of social media has taken over all aspects of socio, economic, political, educational and
cultural space. This has enabled all sorts of competitions in the social media, thereby turning it to
media war among the contenders. Politically, political parties in Nigeria adopted significantly the
use of social media as its major source of its campaign to woo the electorates to their parties.
This study focused on political parties and the matrix of media war in Nigeria and the challenges
it imposed to the electorates. The specific objectives include: to determine if social media war of
political parties in their political campaigns is a challenge to the electorates in determining the
political party to register as members; to find out if social media has made it difficult for the
electorates in choosing the candidates to vote for during elections, and to determine if social
media war by political parties play any role in determining voters turn out during elections. This
study is anchored on agenda setting theory as its theoretical framework of analysis, while survey
research design was adopted, making use of primary sources of data. Population of 2, 673,340
was used with a sample size of 400, determined with the application of Taro Yameni
Mathematical Formula. The study applied stratified sampling technique as research questions
and hypotheses raised to guide the work were tested using Chi Square. Findings show that social
media war by political parties imposed challenge to the electorates in determining the political
parties to belong to, and vote for as well as turn out during elections. The study recommends
among others, that political parties should create a robust and effective social media presence to
inform and educate the electorates and woo them to their parties.