Nigerian Political Parties and their Social Media Followership: Aftermath of 2015 General Elections

Abstract

Social media especially Facebook and Twitter have given organizations and public figures an inexpensive platform of engaging with the public. Some organizations and public figures have adapted well to social media and others have not while another group looks at it indifferently. This study looks at the followership of the two main political parties (APC and PDP) in Nigeria on Facebook and Twitter after the 2015 general elections using content analysis, the uses and gratification theory of the media underpinned the study. An earlier study before the election in 2014 revealed that APC had 20,702 followers on Facebook and 49 followers on Twitter in, while PDP had 36,268 fans on Facebook and 5839 followers on twitter. Despite winning the general election and defeating the incumbent PDP, the APC still trailed the PDP on the social media where their Facebook and Twitter followers numbered 28,818 and 244 respectively compared to the defeated PDP’s numbers which increased to 74,503 and 79,516 for Facebook and Twitter respectively. The result found this oddity where popularity on the social media does not equate to cast votes on election days. In the time after the data collection, both APC and PDP have gone on to announce the formation of new social media accounts in 2018 due to internal party disagreements.