Social Media and Youths Participation in the 2024 #EndBadGovernance Protests in South-East Nigeria

Background: In recent years, Nigeria has witnessed a surge in protests and demonstrations against bad governance, corruption, and human rights abuses. Nigerian youths have always been at the forefront of these protests, leveraging on social media to express their grievances and demands. The social media platforms played a crucial role in organizing, mobilizing, and sustaining these protests (Aljazeera, 2024). This brought about the need for this study to examine the influence of social media on end-bad-governance protests in Nigeria. Objective: This study examined the influence of social media use by the final year students of Federal Universities in South East Nigeria on end-bad-governance protests in Nigeria. Method: Survey research method was used to select the population and sample size of the participants/respondents who were undergraduate students of the Federal Universities in South East Nigeria. The instrument of data collection was questionnaire which was first subjected to content and face validity and was found reliable in a pilot study measured at Cronbach alpha of 0.73 while descriptive method was used for data analysis, presentation and interpretation. Results: The results of data collected and analyzed showed that the undergraduate students of UNN, EA-FUNAI, FUTO and UNIZIK had good knowledge of social media use on end bad governance protests in Nigeria. A greater percent of the respondents were social media users and fans who directly and indirectly participated cum supported the protest. There was high rate of respondents’ awareness of social media coverage and reportage of the outcome of the protest such as killings and destruction of valuable properties in Nigeria. Majority of the undergraduates students were highly influenced to react and participate against political governance in the protest. Conclusion: This study concludes that social media platforms were extensively used to mobilize young people for these protests. Social media provided information channels for youths to voice their concerns on pressing issues such as poverty, hunger, high governance costs, corruption, unemployment, insecurity, and the reversal of fuel subsidy removal, among other matters. Unique Contribution: This study has offered new insight into the increasing influence of social media on end-bad-governance protests in the lives of Nigerian especially the youths in institutions of higher learning. It is expected that policymakers, social media regulatory bodies, and communication experts will find this fresh insight useful in planning future advocacy campaigns and programmes on social media and on end-bad-governance protests in Nigeria. Key Recommendations: The recommendations of this study were: introduction of Social Media Education (SOMED) as a programmes or course of study in Nigerian Federal Universities, institutionalize and regularize the use of social media in coverage and reportage of significant cum important issues, events and occurrences and that Federal Government of Nigeria should do its best to adhere strictly to rules and principles of good governance.