Perceived Usefulness of Facebook in Sharing Political Campaign Messages During The 2023 Governorship Election in Delta State Nigeria

The 2023 Delta state governorship election highlighted the fact that Facebook has increasingly become an important platform of political communication in Nigeria. This paper has discussed the perceived usefulness of Facebook among voters in sharing campaign messages in the election, in the context of its accessibility, engagement and influence in voter decision-making. Following Media Richness Theory and Selective Exposure Theory, the proposed research clarified how multimedia and interactive capabilities of Facebook might lead to better message interpretation, and how the characteristic of users to engage in attitude-correlated content may influence exposure and interpretation. The chosen research design is a survey research design, which involves the use of 400 respondents who developed the instrument in the form of structured questionnaires to collect information using a multistage sampling strategy to represent Delta State. Results revealed that a large number of the respondents found facebook helpful because it was immediate, interactive, and had a broad coverage of various demographic categories. Nonetheless, the misinformation and selective exposure were also a concern of respondents who remarked that political content was usually serving to strengthen existing preferences, instead of expanding their perspectives. In general, the paper has emphasized the usefulness and weaknesses of Facebook as a campaigning platform. Based on these findings, it is recommended that political stakeholders consider adopting more balanced and fact-checked communication strategies on Facebook to enhance informed decision-making among voters.