Yomi Daramola

New Media and Democracy: Nigeria's President and the Facebook Example: a Study of How Proper Use of Social Media Can Enhance Voter Awareness and Participation in Emerging Democracies Yomi Daramola

This book is designed to make voters, politicians, journalists, media trainers and communication scholars embrace the emergence of new media as they affect public consciousness in urban Nigeria - how they drive civic activism as well as inspire political discourse. It traces the use of new media technology with a deliberate focus on Facebook, an American online platform that is said to have more than 600 million subscribers and made available in many languages across the world with millions of Nigerians socialising and networking on it. It shows how Nigeria's 14th President, Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, GCFR, positioned himself and his 2011 presidential campaign as being very modern and ICT-relevant, and how he gained more Facebook fans and followers than the combined tally of British Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and South African President Jacob Zuma, placing second only behind America's President Barack Obama. Hamilton and Daramola's findings, analyses, literature review, theoretical framework and methodology shed more light on how the effective use of new media will shape the future of electioneering in Africa's most populous country, Nigeria.