Technext’s podcast series, Techbytes, had its twenty-fourth episode focusing on how social media can influence the electoral cycles in Nigeria.
In the latest episode titled, How far has social media influenced the 2023 elections, the hosts, Omoleye Omoruyi and Ganiu Oloruntade, discussed with David Hundeyin, an investigative journalist discussed the influence social media can and has had in the Nigerian election cycle.
The main conversation with David Hundeyin focused on the roles social media has played in the Nigerian electoral campaigns, how it can influence voters’ choices and its potential risks.
It is no surprise that social media has greatly influenced our lives. It has gone past the days of just entertainment and serves more purpose than communication.
Read Also: How to vote: All you need to know about the 2023 election process
The influence of social media on Nigeria’s electoral campaigns
Social media has undoubtedly altered the world in all its forms. What was once considered a trend has become a powerful revolution and established itself as a crucial societal impact goal. This effect has significantly impacted politics.
Chatting with David Hundeyin, he explained that the dominance of social media in the current election campaign is Nigeria’s most significant change. David recalled previous election cycles and explained that social media had less impact than now because more Nigerians are online now, and there is affordable high-speed internet access.
There wasn’t that much investment on the part of politicians into trying to control narratives on social media. They generally didn’t just care what people were saying on the internet.
However, between 2011 and 2015, there was a minimal change, which continued to increase until 2019. Even at that, many people still doubted social media’s power and influence, believing that elections were won on the streets.
It’s becoming increasingly evident that social media is, if it’s not already at the center of electoral conversation, heading in that direction.
He also used the Endsars movement, which he described as a political action, to illustrate how social media can and has affected the election cycle. For him, it was the first time in Nigeria that he had seen something that had grown organically online, migrated offline, and now had an influence on the streets.
For the first time what was happening online was heavily influencing and if not outrightly controlling something that was happening offline
He foresees this becoming a trend, especially in Nigeria, given the demographic increase in the youth population in the coming years.
Read Also: How to monitor the 2023 presidential election results with the INEC Result Viewing portal (IReV)
How social media can influence voters and electoral choices
According to David Hundeyin, peer pressure is an important factor in politics, one of the key differences between social media platforms and traditional media. He believes social media allows people to interact with their peers and others, and these discussions can have a big impact.
With all due respect to the Nigerian voters, the Nigerian voter is a political animal that is heavily influenced by its peers.
He used Peter Obi’s Obidient campaign as a prime illustration of the power of peer pressure. He thinks peer pressure and the fear of being left out played a major role in the party and movement’s rapid growth over 18 months.
Peer pressure, according to him, is a very powerful influence in political discussions, and social media is the perfect petri dish for making political fear of missing out take place.
Regarding political campaigns, social media is a different ball game compared to traditional methods because it leverages the power of peer pressure and your mutuals to suck you into narratives and conversations that probably would not have happened offline. It gives you that feeling to contribute or participate.
I think the Peter Obi campaign specifically in my opinion has in terms of social media engagement has been the most successful political campaign in Nigerian history ever, even more successful than the APC’s campaign in 2015.
He further explained that the concept of semi-anonymity that social media offers allows for freedom of expression, which might have been difficult for some individuals to do offline.
Read Also: 2023 elections: will Nigeria witness the emergence of digital vote buying?
Mitigating the potential risks of social media
The four main uses of social media are sharing, learning, interacting, and marketing, and while it promotes free speech, one of the widely known potential risks is disinformation and misinformation. In the case of electoral campaigns, which is a fundamental and significant practice, these potential risks can cause much damage.
Defining social media as it relates to this context, David Hundeyin said, “social media is basically a collection of conversations which are carried out by your peers, ordinary people, mutuals as against something distributed by an authoritative source and that makes it the perfect place to convert gossip into quote-unquote facts.”
Another danger posed by social media is its relative anonymity. It confers the idea that it is a free world where people can say or draw anything without restriction, limitation, or repercussions. This somehow brings out the worst in people and allows them to say things they might not say or associate themselves with in person.
David went on to say that anonymity is more of a problem than we realize, particularly because solving the problem of exposing anonymous social accounts is viewed as doxing, which the internet consensus regards as wrong, but he disagrees with this conceptual approach.
It’s more preferable for people to be able to set the world on fire using their words on the internet but the minute they are required to stand by their words using their real world identity, somehow that is even worse
The third danger concerns social media platforms and their engagement in political judgment. According to David, certain narratives with ulterior motives are always promoted during election campaigns, and despite being aware of the misinformation and disinformation, social media platforms do little or nothing about it.
It has been proven over and over and over again that a lot of the people who take part in political conversations you know so-called political influencers are actually getting paid to say and do all these things.
He believes their nonchalance in curbing these problems could be because of the high engagement metrics, which is a huge deal for their advertisers. He also believes these social media platforms promote this content more often to generate more engagement.
Social media and voter turnout
Speaking on this, David Hundeyin said that although social media has played an outsized role in both the EndSars and Obidient movement, it is not clear yet how and why that migration of political action online to offline took place.
Why exactly this has happened now, I have no idea, but it has happened I’m very happy that it’s happened, and to all intents and purposes, as far as it’s possible to tell, this is actually only going to get even more intense going forward.
Social media platforms and their power during election
According to David Hundeyin, there are two main responsibilities that social media and traditional media platforms should do during this electoral cycle.
David Hundeyin believes social media platforms need to accept the sheer extent of power they have and the responsibility that comes with such power in terms of content moderation.
I think the social media platforms need to accept that they have some responsibility even if they don’t have legal liability yet that they have a moral responsibility to ensure that certain things are not permitted on their platform.
Even with free speech as one of the major selling points for these social media platforms, David does not believe in free speech, though he agrees that there are degrees of free speech. He also suggested that platforms have the authority to decide what is said on their platform, particularly if it affects or threatens other people’s freedom of expression.
For traditional media platforms, their responsibility is to put out accurate information and not intentionally report skewed narratives causing misinformation. David agreed this is the case for some conventional newspapers and media houses that are partisans.
Listen to the full techbytes podcast here, and contribute to the conversation.
Meanwhile, you can check out other techbytes episodes with exciting conversations here. We hope to see you next week in the next techbyte episode.
Technext Newsletter
Get the best of Africa’s daily tech to your inbox – first thing every morning.
Join the community now!
