Use of Twitter Among Political Office Holders for Public Communication in Nigeria: Prospects and Challenges
Abstract
The explosion of the internet in recent times, has dramatically transformed the way information is created, disseminated and distributed. In an age when information equates to power, a diversity of opinion can actually lead to more creative problem solving and more equitable outcomes in a society. This paper appraises the use of Twitter among political office holders for public communication looking at its prospects and challenges. The paper adopted textual analysis and interview as method of gathering data for the study to discover the role Twitter plays in breaking the news and how traditional media channels are now picking up tweets of political office holders and treating it as press releases for public consumption. Anchored on social presence theory, which is one of the most popular constructs used to describe and understand how people socially interact in an online learning environment, this study found that Twitter is a great platform for public communication, but access to internet is still limited to urban areas and among the elites, unlike the US where 62 percent of adults get news from Twitter, and a president has over 42 million followers, but in Nigeria, we are not yet there. We should not discard the use of the traditional press releases and regular engagement with the media and stakeholders.
Keywords
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Asemah, E. S., Nwammuo, A., N & Kwam-Uwaoma, A. O. A. (2017). Theories and models of communication. Jos: Jos University Press.
Baumgartner, J. C., & Morris, J. S. (2010). My Face Tube politics: social networking web sites and political engagement of young adults. Social Science Computer Review, 28(1).
Campbell, S.W., & Kwak, N. (2010). Mobile communication and civic life: linking patterns of use to civic and political engagement. Journal of Communication, 60(3).
Chadwick, A. (2014). The hybrid media system: Politics and power. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Chih-Hsiung, T. (2012). The Impact of text-based computer media communication on online social presence. Available at http://www.ncolr.org/jiol/issues/pdf/1.2.6.pdf. Accessed 10/1/2018
Dunu, I. V., & Uzochukwu, C. E. (2015). Social media: An effective tool for social mobilization in Nigeria. Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 20(4), Ver. III
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/10575
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
Copyright (c) 2018 Canadian Social Science
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Reminder
- How to do online submission to another Journal?
- If you have already registered in Journal A, then how can you submit another article to Journal B? It takes two steps to make it happen:
1. Register yourself in Journal B as an Author
- Find the journal you want to submit to in CATEGORIES, click on “VIEW JOURNAL”, “Online Submissions”, “GO TO LOGIN” and “Edit My Profile”. Check “Author” on the “Edit Profile” page, then “Save”.
2. Submission
Online Submission: http://cscanada.org/index.php/css/submission/wizard
- Go to “User Home”, and click on “Author” under the name of Journal B. You may start a New Submission by clicking on “CLICK HERE”.
- We only use four mailboxes as follows to deal with issues about paper acceptance, payment and submission of electronic versions of our journals to databases: caooc@hotmail.com; office@cscanada.net; ccc@cscanada.net; ccc@cscanada.org
Articles published in Canadian Social Science are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY).
Canadian Social Science Editorial Office
Address: 1020 Bouvier Street, Suite 400, Quebec City, Quebec, G2K 0K9, Canada.
Telephone: 1-514-558 6138
Website: Http://www.cscanada.net; Http://www.cscanada.org
E-mail:caooc@hotmail.com; office@cscanada.net
Copyright © Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture