Social media and political participation in the midst of COVID-19 pandemic: an empirical review of Anambra 2021 gubernatorial election

Abstract

The study investigated the role of social media in Anambra gubernatorial election. Social media platforms such as, Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, Instagram and LinkedIn have completely changed our understanding of politics in the 21st century. Though its impacts are still evolving, but social media has rapidly proffered new ways to ‘stimulate the masses engagement in political matters. Specifically, the aim of this study was to, verify the dominant social media platform used by the respondents during the election, to ascertain if the respondent’s preferred political candidate was instigated by social media campaign and to find out if the respondent’s derive gratification for using social media platform during the election. The study was hinged on Technological Determinism and Uses and Gratifications theory. The population of study was 2.5 million registered voters in Anambra state as of 2021 election. Krejcie and Morgan sample size table was used to rack up at sample size of 384. Multi-stage sampling technique was employed and purposive sampling method was used. The results indicate that WhatsApp, followed by Facebook was the respondent’s most used social media platform during Anambra 2021 gubernatorial election, social media sites influenced the respondent’s choice of candidate and majority of the respondents found social media sites very useful. The study recommends that the Nigerian government should provide a network in remote areas so that more citizens will join the online platform and the government should enforce credible monitoring on the increasing rate of fake news and abuse of social media platforms by citizen journalist.