Setting the agenda through Twitter: Assessing news framing of events in Nigeria's 2019 electioneering

Whereas the evolution of interactive media facilitates the rise of user-generated content thus introducing changes into the practices of political communication and journalism at large, only a few studies were conducted to uncover how these developments increasingly influence the news practices of mainstream media. However, little or none of the studies were conducted in the Nigerian context. Accordingly, this study based its construct on the agenda-setting, agenda-building and framing hypotheses to examine how political messages with built-in frames from the Twitter handles of two presidential candidates: Muhamadu Buhari of the APC and Atiku Abubakar of PDP set the news agenda for mainstream media thereby influencing public perceptions about issues in the period of 2019 electioneering in Nigeria. Based on a mixed method of qualitative and quantitative content analysis of n300 tweets from these candidates and n300 news content published via the handles of Daily Trust, Punch and Vanguard newspapers, the study reveals that the mainstream media relied on the tweets as one of their major sources of information about the electioneering activities of the candidates, thus making similar issues become dominant in both the politicians’ agendas and the news agenda of the mainstream media during the period. Besides, the mainstream media contributed meaningfully in emphasizing the narrative frames in the candidates’ agenda through the style of presentation of candidates’ tweets in the news. The study concludes by recommending the need for improved professionalism on the part of journalists and the media, and increased media literacy skills on the part of Nigerian audiences.