Media and Youths’ Political Engagement during the 2015 Nigerian General Election
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Date
2017-05
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Published by Faculty of Communication, Philosophy & Humanities, University of Beira-Interior, Portugal.
Abstract
Thecentralityofmediatopoliticalandcivicengagement has received tremendous exploration in many climes across the globe. Similarly, the dynamism that characterised media landscape has oftentimes calledforcontinuinginterrogationoftheroleofmedia in democratic and civic movements, discourses and participations. While the advent of new/social media led to the comparative exploration of the potency of legacy and novel media, mixed findings have characterised these research endeavours. Besides, most of the findings originated from advanced democratic hemisphere. In view of this gap in the literature, this study sampled 350 Nigerian
university students in Kwara state during the 2015 Nigerian General Election to examine the differential contributions of legacy and novel media to the youths’ political engagement. Premised on media displacement theory, the study anticipates differences in the contribution of mainstream and new mediatoyouths’politicalengagement,withnewmedia precipitatingmorecivicengagementthanthemainstream media. Findings offer important contributions on the role of media to youths’ political engagementingeneralandthecontinuingimportanceofthe mainstreammediatocivicandpoliticalparticipation among the youths.
Description
The centrality of the media to the lives of individuals, groups, community and nations was at the heart of the earliest media effects research championed by Lazarsfeld and his colleagues, resuscitation of media effects research, and evolutions of theories such as agenda-setting, spiral of silence, diffusion of news, cultivation, among others (Baran & Davis, 2012; DeFleur, 2010; Severin & Tankard, 2010).
Keywords
displacement theory, legacy media, novel media, youth, political engagement
Citation
Mustapha, L. K. & Mustapha, M. L. (2017). Media and youths’ political engagement during the 2015 Nigerian general election. Estudos em Comunicação (Communication Studies), 24, 177-195