Influence of Political Tweets on Campaign Coverage: Building the News Agenda in Twittersphere

Abstract

Research has presented empirical evidence to suggest a causal relationship between how political actors use Twitter to share information and media coverage. This affirms the use of political tweets as information subsidies. Studies on this area from Sub-Sahara Africa and particularly Nigeria are however visibly absent. This study attempts to bridge this gap by exploring how tweets from two prominent presidential candidates in Nigeria's 2019 general elections influenced media coverage of election matters during a four month period of November 2018 to February 2019. A total ofn = 1,048 tweets were sampled for this study. Findings from our study affirm the existence of relationships between general issues-security, anticorruption, and economy-in Nigeria's political discourse, political tweets of presidential candidates on these issues, and how these issues were prioritized in media coverage.