Browsing by Author "Kunle SOMORIN"

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    Social Media Engagement and Citizens’ Participation in Nigeria’s 2023 Presidential Election
    (LCU, 2025-04) Kunle SOMORIN
    By creating avenues for information sharing, encouraging civic engagement, and influencing public opinion, this paper situates how social media influenced the campaign and people's perception of candidates and parties during the 2023 presidential election in Nigeria. The paper addresses the central role media play generally in engendering citizen participation, focusing essentially on social media engagement since all citizens above age 18 have the constitutional power to elect who they desire to lead them. Through campaign and voting, Nigerians actively participate in politics, influencing their government representatives' decisions democratically. This study builds upon a comprehensive analysis of existing literature and employing secondary data and case study approach, to assess voters’ engagement through the social media, their contributions to shaping public discourse, and critically evaluates the challenges associated with hate speech, misinformation and disinformation during the campaigns. While the study observes that social media engagement is crucial in democracies by accelerating citizens’ hold on elected officials to become accountable through voting, party membership and interfaces with party and government officials. The study reveals that the impact of social media has fundamentally altered the terrain of political discourse and the dynamics of interpersonal interactions between politicians, governments, and citizens in the country. It was then recommended that the government of Nigeria should use technology to improve the electoral process, to lower the possibility of manipulation and use electronic voting systems or mechanism in the transmission of election results to strengthen the integrity of future election.