Nigeria's Social Media Culture: Exploring Civic Participation of Youths in the 2015 Presidential Election

The global expansions in the use of social media accessed on mobile technologies have brought about extraordinary opportunities in society and enabled a new trend in political communication, especially among youths. Interestingly, a new public sphere of social connectedness and discussion is apparently developing, with the dawn of social media in Nigeria. The political participation of Nigerian youth and their presence on social media via mobile technologies was, therefore, put on scholarship radar in order to determine how much influence it exerts on the polity. Using survey research method and hinged on the Technological Acceptance Model, this study investigated how young people in three states of Enugu, Anambra and Ogun states were politically stimulated to participate during the 2015 Presidential Elections with respect to their social media presence accessed on mobile technologies. After a survey of 300 youths, purposively selected from the three selected states, results indicate that numerous mobile text messages and social media updates sent by politicians during the campaign influenced their voting decisions, though with a minimal effect. The study, thus, recommends that media educate the polity on the potentialities of mobile technologies in governance so that they can effectively utilize it as a political communication tool for political development in Nigeria.