Online Political Campaign Communications In Nigeria: A Study of Information Contents and Political Orientation of Nigerian Websites

Abstract

This study has investigated on the level of political orientation of some of the Nigerian Web sites. Content analysis was employed to collect data from 350 web sites. The unit of analysis being the first page of each web site. Online political campaign communication weblog tool is a new phenomenon among Nigerian politicians to reach across diverse voters and prospective ones. Overall findings of the content-analysis show that the origins of the majority (65%) of the Web sites were within Nigeria, while political issues accounts for (69%) of the contents of the Web sites with their domains named as blog or weblog totaling (60%), and the ownerships of the Web sites belong to ‘society’, which accounted for (91%) of the Web sites. Information type on the Web sites was feature articles (58%) that focused on political issues. The study concluded that online political campaign communication is still very low in Nigeria political context and amongst Nigeria citizenry.