Social Media and Changing Political Behaviors among the Youth in Kwara State of Nigeria
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2023-01-02
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
Diminishing youth’s political engagement has been a subject of concern to political stakeholders thus becoming a fertile field of inquiry by scholars in political science, political communication and electoral studies. Being a global phenomenon resulting from multiplicity of causations, youth civic and political engagements receive attention from multi-theoretical and cross-disciplinary perspectives with diversifying prognoses. From the political communication viewpoint, the quantum and quality of political information in the mediated public sphere as well as representation in and access to the media have remained important factors predicting limited youth political participation and civic engagement. A corpus of studies, mostly from advanced democratic climes, has, however, challenged the notion that youth’s mainstream media exclusion, in terms of access to and representation in media, precipitates political malaise. Premised on the social media affordance, these alternative positions believe that youth may not be engaging in electoral politics, they are exploiting other political participation repertoires created by the new communication ecology. Giving these mixed findings, that are mostly Western-centric, we explore the forms of political behaviors of young people in Kwara State (N=381), North-central Nigeria within the theoretical prism of Civic Volunteerism Model. Findings revealed that social media political campaigns have positive relationships with both online and offline political participation, with online participation being higher, even after controlling for political knowledge and political efficacy. The results have practical and policy implications that need to be addressed to guarantee the future of participatory political culture in youth-dominated democracies like Nigeria.
Keywords: Social Media, The Youth, Civic Volunteerism Model, Online Political Participation, Offline Political Participation.
Description
Keywords
Citation
Mande, M. A., Mustapha, L. K. Omar, B., Mustapha, M. L. & Ahmed, I. S. Y. (2022) Social media content preferences and political participation among Nigerian youths. Romanian Journal of Communication and Public Relations, 24(1): 7-23.