Digital Media and Political Participation among Nigerian Youths in the 2019 General Elections

Abstract

Every era in life throws up its own opportunities and challenges, and here we are, in a digital era made possible by advancements in information and communication technologies. That being the case, it will amount to self-deceit for anybody in this era to pretend that the advancements in information and communication technologies do not have any effects on the political, social, cultural and religious lives of the people. At the political arena, the advent of digital media has brought about an entirely different type of politicking and campaigns referred to as digital political campaigns. This type of campaign permits politicians to reach out to the electorate through digital platforms without necessarily embarking on rallies. As a matter of truth, the technologies of those digital media and their resultant online platforms have not only bridged the communication gap between content-creators and content-consumers; but have even gone a long way in turning the communication process into a more interactive, participatory and democratic dialogue. Thus, the public communication sphere has been flung wide-open for public participation without restrictions. By the very nature of the digital media (interactive, participatory and democratic); it could be assumed that anybody with an internet-enabled device can become a partaker in the communication process. But such an assumption may forever remain conjecture until it is connected or experimented upon. To that end, this study investigated the use of digital media for political participation in the 2019 general elections in Nigeria. It adopted the survey method of research to determine: (i) the most-frequently-used digital media for political participation of Nigerian youths in the 2019 elections (ii) the amount of time Nigerian youths spent on the digital media for political participation in the 2019 elections (iii) the number of times Nigerian youths visited the digital media for political participation in the 2019 elections (iv) the gratifications which Nigerian youths sought from the digital media and (v) the relationship between use of the digital media and political-needs gratification among Nigerian youths.