Political participation and the social media network of young Nigerians

Abstract

Social media have expanded the opportunities for a more inclusive youth political participation (YPP) across the world. Previous studies on YPP have focused on how social media have influenced participation in elections, with scant attention given to the impact of the networked capacity of online political discourse on offline youth political participation. The generative capacity of Benkler’s Networked Public Square served as the framework, while mixed methods of QUAN + qual triangulation design was employed. The Lagos metropolis was stratified into Mainland and Island, with 505 copies of a questionnaire purposively administered to digitally competent Nigerian youth across the areas. In-depth interviews were conducted with twelve young political social media influencers. Results were thematically analysed, expressed in frequency counts and/or correlation analysis at p ≤ 0.05. The positive and significant relationship between Twitter use and offline YPP (r = 0.1) has great conceptual implications on the generative capacity of the networked public sphere.