IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON VOTING BEHAVIOUR AMONG YOUTHS IN ILORIN-WEST LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA OF KWARA STATE, NIGERIA

Social media, a 21th century platform and a tool to help nation and its societies to create, express, exchange their thoughts and ideas widely. People of all age group are fascinated to use and make this tool as any other media, to connect it to the world with lesser time and energy. Social media technology is wide enough to include blogging, picture-sharing, wall posting, music-sharing, crowd sourcing and voice over IP, blogs etc, which today people are enjoying to utilize it to communicate with each other and also stimulate themselves to innovate more ideas and expressions. Social media, emerging as a hottest promotion tool during elections by the political parties to influence, connect and express their vision, objective to help them increase their visibility, or to gain majority. Today people live on social media, where even political parties want to reach out to hit them where they live. This study was intends to examine the impact of social media on voting behavior among youths in Nigeria. This study is guided by the following objectives; to finds out if social media influences voters’ behaviour among youths in Offa Local Government, Kwara State, to determine the influence social media has on voters’ behaviour in Offa Local Government, Kwara state and to find out other factors that influence voters’ behaviour in Offa Local Government, Kwara state. The study employed the descriptive and stastical design; questionnaires in addition to library research are applied in order to collect data. Primary and secondary data sources were used and data was analyzed using the chi square statistical tool at 5% level of significance which is presented in frequency tables and percentage. The respondents under the study are 150 voters in Ilorin-West Local Government Area of Kwara State, Nigeria. The study proposed that social media is an influence on voters’ behavior which affect their decisions and judgements. It further suggests that campaigns on electoral process should be a continous one on the social media with the right or positive intention.