Facebook Use for Political Campaigning in Nigeria for 2015 General Elections: Representation of Two Parties Campaigns

During the last election in Nigeria, different political parties made use of new media for their political campaign. They made use of websites, SMS, SNSs, online blog advertising, YouTube ad, to create what and how we should think about/or of them. The aim of this study is to examine how the two top political parties (APC and PDP) in Nigeria used Facebook for their political campaign during the 2015 presidential elections. Coding sheet was used to collect the data. The coding sheet revealed that there were 108 items collected from Facebook, ranged from January 1 to April 30. The population size of the study was particularly two parties – APC and PDP. The study made used of the quantitative content analysis. In order to make the study more scientific, the collected data was entered and analysed in SPSS as descriptive analysis. To make the study more comparative between the two political parties involved, a crosstabulation analysis were adopted. This study featured the propaganda theory in mass/new media, the public opinion theory and use and gratification theory, digital public sphere, as its theoretical framework. The study unveiled interesting facts and figures, and concluded that public opinion is not consciously observed by the electorates until it has achieved its aim.