Influence Of Political Parties Social Media Voters’ Education On Voting Habit Among Youths In 2023 General Elections In Nigeria

Abstract

Since the return of democracy in 1999, Nigeria has recorded high rate of invalid votes coupled with self-disenfranchised people despite the mass media presence in voters’ education. Meanwhile, scholars have examined mass media and voters’ education, there is dearth of studies on social media and voting habit. This study therefore, examined the influence of social media voters’ education on voting habit of Ilorin youths in the 2023 Presidential election. The study is underpinned by Agenda setting and Uses and gratification theories. Content analysis and survey research methods were adopted while coding sheet and questionnaire served as the research instruments. Simple random sampling techniques was used to select 171 posts from the Twitter (X) pages of the three selected political parties while multi-stage sampling technique was used to select 224 undergraduates of University of Ilorin respectively. Statistical package for Social Science version 23.0 was used to analyse the data while charts, simple percentage and frequency table were used to present the data. Findings revealed that social media voters’ education posts motivated youths’ active participation in the 2023 presidential election as they were able to understand the agenda that each political aspirants has for the masses. The study recommended that civil society such as Socio-Economic Right and Accountability Project, Enough is Enough Nigeria, Center for Democracy and Development, etc. should employ social media to educate the Nigerian youths on civic responsibilities as this can create a robust and inclusive electoral process that promotes transparency, accountability and credibility among citizenry in Nigeria.