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ABSTRACT
This work examined the influence of political advertency message on the choice of government candidates by the Electorate in Rivers state Nigeria, in particular, the study sought to ascertain the extent that the electorate in Rivers state was exposed to political advertising, which media was the electorate most exposed to in political advertising as well as the extent political advertising influenced the voting decisions of the electorate. To achieve this, the study used the survey method with the questionnaire as research instrument. Through multi stage sampling, 120 respondents were selected in the two of the three sensational zones in the state and administered the questionnaire. The finding indicates, among other things that the electorate in Rivers state was well exposed to political advertising, that radio was well exposed to political advertising, that radio was influenced in their choices of candidates to the extent that they perceived such messages to be credible. In the light of this finding, it was concluded that political advertising was an essential factor in the political decision of the electorate in Rivers state. Similarly, it was recommended that candidates should strive for credibility in their political messages while the electorate should be critical of all political messages to decipher the truth.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE:
DECLARATION ii
CERTIFICATION iii
DEDICATION iv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT v
TABLE OF CONTENTS vi
ABSTRACT viii
CHAPTER ONE 1
1.0 INTRODUCTION 1
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY 3
1.2 STATEMENT OF RESEARCH PROBLEM 7
1.3 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY 8
1.4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS 9
1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY 10
1.6 SCOPE OF THE STUDY 10
1.7 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY 11
1.8 DEFINITION OF TERMS 12
CHAPTER TWO 14
2.0 INTRODUCTION 14
2.1 SOURCES OF THE LITERATURE 14
2.2 THEORITICAL FRAMEWORK 15
2.3 REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE 18
2.4 THE EFFECT OF ELECTIONS CAMPAIGNS 24
2.5 THE CAMPAIGN MEDIA 31
CHAPTER THREE 33
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 33
3.1 RESEARCH DESIGN 33
3.2 POPULATION OF STUDY 33
3.3 SAMPLE SIZE 33
3.4 SAMPLING PROCEDUES 34
3.5 SOURCES OF DATA COLLECTION 34
3.6 INSTRUMEMT FOR DATA COLLECTION 34
3.7 VALIDITY OF INTRUMENT 35
3.8 ADMINISTRATION OF THE INTRUMENT 35
3.9 METHOD OF DATA ANALYSIS 36
CHAPTER FOUR 37
DATA PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS 37
4.1 INTRODUCTION 37
4.2 DATA PRESENTATION 37
4.3 DISCUSSION OF FINDING 47
CHAPTER FIVE 49
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION 49
5.1 SUMMARYOF FINDINGS 49
5.2 CONCLUSION 50
5.3 RECOMMENDATION 50
REFERENCES 54
APPENDIX ONE 56
QUESTIONNAIRE 57
CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
A close look at old pictures of buses in the 1st century London quickly bring to mind the influence of advertising of product that are still famous today.
As a proof of the effectiveness of advertising some 19th century advertising are still with us today. Pictures of products such as coca-cola, Guinness and level brothers reveal that these companies constantly made use of advertising campaigns worked greatly to boost the sale of these products. Given today, producers and distributions depend on advertising to sell their products.
Without advertisings, buyers would not know about the existence of products and services and continue to remember them. Consequently, the modern industrialized world may collapse (Jefkin 2006).
If factory output is to be maintained profitably, political messages understood and internalized and economic policies interpreted, advertising must continue to be used in the right proportion. Jefkin (2007) argue that “mass production requires mass consumption, which “in turn requires advertising to the mass market through the mass media”.
Apart from products, ideas and services also need to be advertising for acceptance, such idea should be economical or political. Hence, candidate for election into different positions, at different lead in all countries of the world, spend a fortune to sell themselves to the electorates.
The case of the 2011 election in Nigeria exemplifies situation that different political parties in the race for political power made extensive use of advertising to sell their different political parties and candidate to the electorates.
The implication of the above statement is that political parties may have had their charge enhance through advertising messages persuading the electorates to vote for their parties or failed in relying on their goals they ignored this or did not do it the right way. However, the process of this message delivery is a complex one. Some of the questions that may readily come up are:
Were they properly understood?
Were they completely accepted as truth?
Were these advertising messages properly delivered?
And were they able, to influence the voting Behaviour of the electorate who the messages were meant for?
It is in the light of the above that the study examined the influence if political advertising on the voting pattern of the Nigerian electorates, using the 2015 presidential election in Rivers state as a case study.
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
OVERVIEW OF 2015 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
The 2015 presidential election in Nigeria- the fifth since 1999 when the military handed over power to elected civilian will be the first time that the opposition will have a realistic chance of unrest power from the ruling people’s Democratic Party (PDP) all things seems equal it was a two horse race between the people democratic party and the opposition parties , the All Progressive Congress (APC) the party formed in February 2013 from a merge if three ethnically and regionally based political parties.
Before the emergence of the APC, opposition parties were mostly? Fragmented along regime and ethics lines, making it impossible for them to mount a credible challenge to the ruling PDP.
The emergence of a viable opposition concise with a period of great tension between north and south, arising from the decision of Goodluck Jonathan to contest the 2011 elections, a decision that has made many northerners feel cheated in their turn in producing the president and that induce some violence, with president Jonathan, a southern Christians, who contested again and faced a northern Muslim candidate the election had return an implication not just for north-south relation but also for the survival of the countries democracy.
Nigeria is the continent biggest economy and most populous country and is instability in Nigeria could have dire economic effect for the region. Similarly, with number of internally displacement people from the Boko Haram conflict estimated at about 680,000 as of August 2014.
(The Guardian 2014), a mismanaged election would have triggered of post election violence that will celebrate the refugee crises both internally and at the regionally level. For influence, it has been estimated that the BOko Haram conflict has led to more than 100,000 Nigerians seeking refuge in the Niger’s Delta region since the beginning of 2014. It is also estimated that there are 44,000 Nigerian refugee in Cameroon and 2700 in Chad (Baiyeoon 2014) ironically, the neighboring countries where Nigerians are seeking refugee from the Boko Haram conflict are already quite poor and have several socioeconomic challenges of their own.
BRIEF HISTORY OF RIVERS STATE
Rivers state is one of the 36 states of Nigeria.
According to census data release in 2006, the state has a population of 5,185,400, making it the sixth most populous state in the country. Its capital, Port Harcourt is the largest city and is economically significant as the centre of Nigeria’s oil industry. Rivers state is bounded on the south by the Atlantic Ocean, to the north by Imo, Abia and Anambra State to the east by Akwa Ibom state and to the west by Bayelsa and Delta states. It is home to many indigenous ethnic groups: Ikwerre, Ibani, Opobo, Eleme, Okirika and Kalabari, Etche, Ogba, Ogoni, Engenni and others.
The inland part of Rivers State consists of tropical rainforest; towards the coast the typical Niger Delta environment fractures many mangrove swamps.
Rivers State, named after the many rivers that border its territory, was part of the oil Rivers protectorate from 1885 ill 1893, when it became part to the Niger coast protectorate. In 1900 the region was merged with the chartered territories of the Royal Niger Company to form the colony of southern Nigeria.
The state was formed in 1967 with the split of the Eastern religion of Nigeria. Until 1996 the state contained the area which in Bayelsa state.
On 27 may 1967, under the administration of General Yakubu Gowon, decree No. 14 was issued allowing the creation of Rivers State from then on, complaints about political marginalization, environmental degration and economic pauperization remained among the Ijaw groups, such that a separate Bayelsa State was carved out of Rivers State by the military government during 1996.
1.2 STATEMENT OF RESEARCH PROBLEM
In recent times, one cannot help but see that the importance of media political campaigns cannot be over emphasized. Majority of Nigerians look up to the media to shape their life and inform their daily actions and decisions, subsequently, informing the recent palpable use of the media by political parties in influencing the choices of the electorate.
The above trend handy and obvious in the just concluded presidential election where political parties, especially the People Democratic Party (P.D.P) and All Progressive Congress (A.P.C) maximally utilized the media in carrying out political campaigns to sell their parties and the candidates on their platforms.
A major challenge was however-noted: the campaigns to a great extent influenced the voting populace in diverse, ways and so was the reaction and decisions of the electorate diversified. The above promoted the need for this study to investigate the effect of media political campaign on the voting choices of the electorate in the 2015 presidential in Nigeria.
1.3 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
The prime objective of this study is to conduct an in-depth research on the effect of media political campaign on the voting choice of the electorate citing the 2015 presidential Election and Port Harcourt municipal council as points of concentration. The objectives are nevertheless arranged with following order:
- Determine the level of political awareness among the Nigerian electorate.
- Verify the extent to which the media create awareness about the political process before and during the 2011 Presidential election.
- Verify factors responsible for the voting behavior of electorate.
1.4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS
This study was based on the following research question:
- To what extent is the electorate in Rivers State expose to mass media political advertising?
- Through which is the electorate in Rivers State exposed to political advertising?
- To what extent is the electorate influenced by mass media political advertising in its voting decisions?
1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY
The work will be of immense benefit to politicians, government agencies and other stakeholders who will appreciate the need to embark on sustained and an enduring enlightenment political campaigns rather than their periodic ritual which is only embarked on during elections as it is customary in Nigeria.
In media professionals who after consulting services to politicians as well as package their campaigns, and strategies for optical result.
It will also contribute greatly to the academic community by providing insight into the claying voting pattern of Nigeria electorate interested scholars can thus; build on findings of the study.
1.6 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The scope of this study is to find out way by which media’ political campaign effect on the voting choice of the electorate citing the 2015 presidential election and Rivers State as case studies Rivers State is reputed for its effect that befalls it from media campaigns during electioneering periods. These influence that shape the decision making processes of citizens prompt the selection of the state as a case study.
1.7 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY
In the course of the research, oral interviews were conducted on various members of the society.
Nevertheless, the research depends more on the questionnaire which were distributed to varied individuals and were returned on completion. The researcher also consulted some textbook, Journals and Newspapers, all of which provided a lot of information pertaining this study.
Quite obviously, time and money are usually not promptly available, and this posed as a challenge and subsequent warranted the restriction of this research to 2015 presidential election and how it occurred in Rivers State.
Although, this research would have been more analytical and in-depth, if it included past/present general elections in all geo-political zones, but owing to good number of reason, such as time frame of this research and financial inadequacy, it will be carried out on just for the presidential election as conducted in Rivers State.
1.8 DEFINITION OF TERMS
EFFECT: Conceptually, effect is defined as the situation of having an immediate and strong effect on something or somebody operationally it is the possible ways that media political campaigns can influence the preference and support of a given candidate by the electorates.
MEDIA: From a conceptual view point, media is defined as a medium through which information are disseminated, the media is operationalized as television/radio broadcasting, print publication and internet uploads as used for media political campaigns.
POLITICAL CAMPAIGN: In concept, political campaigns are an organized effort which seeks to influence the decision making process within a specific group. In operation, it is the sum total of advert message used by politicians during the 2015 presidential election to garner votes from the voting public.
VOTING CHOICE: Conceptualized as a situation whence voters decide from among range of options of contesting candidates to exercise their franchise in favour of same operational to this research work, it is the choices made by Nigerian voters as who to be voted in the 2015 presidential polls.
ELECTORATE: Conceptually, it is all the officially qualified voters within a particular country or area, or for a particular election. In operation, it is the eligible voters who cast a ballot in the 2015 presidential election.