AUN STUDENTS’ AWARENESS OF THE APC USE OF THE SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE 2015 NIGERIAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION (
ABSTRACT
The study examined AUN students’ awareness of the All Progressives Congress, APC,use of the social media in the 2015 Nigerian presidential election. The study sought to gauge how much AUN students know about APC’s use of the social media in the 2015 Nigerian presidential election. The study is anchored on two relevant theories: Media Dependency and Agenda-Setting theories. The researcher used survey method,with questionnaire as the instrument for data collection. The data gathered from the closed- and open-ended items of the questionnaire were analyzed using simple percentages and frequency counts. Findings show that majority of the students know enough about the party’s strategic use of the social media in the 2015 presidential election to state that doing so made the party popular, publicized its manifestoes, as well as made it to emerge victorious at the poll. Therefore, political parties should embrace the social media wholly as a veritable toolfor carrying out electoral campaigns.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
The Meriam-Webster dictionary (2008) defines social media as “forms of electronic communication (as websites for social networking and blogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other contents (as video)”. The same source defines networking as “the exchange of information or services among individuals, groups, or institutions, specifically the cultivation of productive relationships among young adults.”
In the 21st century, the means of communication has risen to many platforms; technology has created new templates of communication everywhere — from person to person, person to mass media and vice versa. As computer technology increases, the coming of social media has become so popular that it is completely changing the way people view, send, respond to societal issues and, is opening up new ways for people to interact with one another and across the world at large without having to step a foot out of their homes or beyond the shore of their countries (Alysse B. 2010).
Social media arrival has greatly changed human way of communication. Marshal McLuhan in 1964 predicted that the world would someday become a “global village” where things that happen in some part of the world would be instantly known worldwide. People can stay directly in their homes and get latest events, information and entertainment happening around the world and enjoy full interaction with the world by pressing that single button.
