Nexus Between News Media Negative Political Campaigns And 2015 Presidential Elections In Nigeria
Loading...
Date
2020-09
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
The 2015 presidential election campaigns were characterised by unprecedented number of negative political campaigns on the social media that many watchers of politics were afraid that the election will lead to unimaginable crisis. This study examined the relationship between social media negative political campaigns and voting pattern during the 2015 presidential elections in Nigeria. It is anchored on the selective perception theory which emphasizes that audience actively select, retain and react to the same message in different
ways. Through multistage sampling technique, respondents were selected from two states. Findings revealed that 88.1% of the respondents said social media negative political campaigns did not influence how they voted during the 2015 presidential polls. The study concluded that social media political campaigns are necessary tool for soliciting for voters’ votes; however, spreading negative messages would not make voters vote for such candidate and political party, except such candidate and their party offer the voters better options compared to the opponents. It was therefore recommended that political parties and candidates should build campaign messages through the social media around candidate’s credibility and party programmes.
Description
Keywords
Smear/Attack Advertisement, Electorate, Election, Political Advertising, News Media