Perception of South-East Residents on the Influence of Social Media Messages on Electoral Violence during the 2023 Presidential Election in Nigeria

Electoral processes in Nigeria have been plagued by various forms of violence since the country gained independence, and social media has not been exempted from these spikes in electoral violence. Hence, the need to ascertain the Perception of South-East residents on the influence of social media messages on electoral violence during the 2023 presidential election in Nigeria becomes inevitable. To conduct this study, the survey design was adopted. Questionnaire was used to generate data for the study. A sample size of 405 respondents were determined using the Modified Cochran formula from the population of 13,524,918 Internet/social media subscribers in South-East. The Multi-stage sampling technique was used. The findings, among others, revealed that social media messages, to a moderate extent, influenced electoral violence during the 2023 Nigerian presidential election. Also, it found that the majority of the respondents moderately perceived the influence of social media messages on electoral violence during the 2023 Nigerian presidential election. Based on these findings, the study recommends that INEC and other electoral bodies should educate the citizens that perceive social media content on electoral violence on how to fact-check information sources