THE NEW MEDIA AND POLITICAL MOBILIZATION IN A NASCENT DEMOCRACY NIGERIA’S EXPERIENCE IN THE FOURTH REPUBLIC
ABSTRACT
The triumphant entry of Nigeria into the promised land of democracy benefitted in no mean degree from heroic contribution by the media in the course of the protracted transition to democracy. For historical reasons and or the unique character of the Nigerian state, as well as changes in information and communication technology (ICT), new opportunities and challenges have been encountered in the effort to deepen and broaden political participation in the course of these turbulent fifteen years of democratic experience. It is against this background that the paper assesses the extent of change introduced to political mobilization (especially citizen activism) by the new media. Relying predominantly on content analysis of  secondary data, this paper contends that both democracy and good governance are enhanced by the increased leverage the new media grants to citizens, with interactivity, old-new media synergy, citizen activism and journalism being among the novelties introduced to political mobilization, even though it is less than certain that the force generated online are always immediately transmissible as actual political influence, since experience elsewhere (in Tunisia during the Arab Spring) has shown that in crises situations, citizens, for fear of repression by political authorities, may not operate with the same level of commitment offline as they did online. To surmount the identified obstacles to broader online political mobilization, namely low literacy rate and low internet penetration, it is suggested, amongst others, that the investment in education and information and communication technology infrastructure be increased since these variables correlate positively with enhanced use of new media for political and sundry activities.
Key Words: Political Mobilization, New media, Citizen Journalism, Interactivity, Democracy
Introduction
Democracy as the ascendant form of government thrives on the active involvement of the citizenry. This citizenry tends, however, to employ the metaphor of physics, to remain kinetic or potential energy, that is, energy at rest, except when converted to mechanical energy, which is energy in motion. This means while a country like Nigeria has a potential political asset in its large population standing at 170, 000,000, and more so when the population is educated, this mass, formulated as the political community by David Easton (Varma 1975), would not count for anything as a country seeks to entrench democratic and participatory government unless jolted and sustained in motion by some force and agency. The question of what agency midwives the transformation of a political community from kinetic or potential energy to mechanical energy, that is the question of political mobilization, leads us, amongst others, to the media in its variegated forms.
The significance of the new media in understanding and facilitating political mobilization arise from the fact that the definition of what is often designated political, in the sense of activity with consequence for the political system as formulated by (Wolin 1960 cited in Johari 1985:11), has been expanded, thanks to the change in information and communication technology, beyond the frontiers of government-recognized and licensed institution-based involvement. There is now a vast space, designated as cyberspace, providing a platform for social activities, inclusive of the political.
The new media has become so entrenched in politics that the only contentious point about its growing ubiquitous influence is whether it is a force that is inexorably beneficial to democratic government or it is but a neutral channel equally amenable to anti-democratic ends as it is for democratic ones. Together with this is the issue of the right mix of factors that conduce to unleashing the vast potential the new media seems to herald for political activities. Even outside of the unique and turbulent context of the celebrated Arab Spring, the new media has played facilitating roles in some significant political activities, for instance both the 2011 and 2015 Nigerian elections witnessed snowballing role for the new media. Paradoxically, archetypical democracies like the United States of America have been in the news for spying on private citizens by leveraging on the new media; the import of this is that whatever changes the new media portends for political mobilization still holds in the balance.
 The caveat entered for the change the new media brings into politics stressed above must not, however, detract from the high regard in which the new media is held based on some of the epochal victories it has facilitated. Thus, a topic such as this provides a bird’s eye view of the changing nature of political mobilization and engagement in the dynamic context of the new media. This imperative was further crystallized in these words by Aday, Farrel, Lynch, Sides, Kelly and Zuckerman (2010):
THE NEW MEDIA AND POLITICAL MOBILIZATION IN A NASCENT DEMOCRACY NIGERIA’S EXPERIENCE IN THE FOURTH REPUBLIC
