Thirteenth International Conference on The Arts in Society

Abstract

The 2015 general election will remain one of the most intensely debated events in the history of Nigeria. This is not only in terms of its successes and surprises, but also in terms of the innovations that it brought to electioneering campaigns. One of these is the role of the youths and their deployment of internet memes- pieces of media such as pictures, images and videos which spread from person to person through the internet- to satirise political gladiators and comment on issues regarding the elections. The use of memes at every stage in the electioneering process reveals the critical shift of the world from traditional to social media as a powerful, instant, interactive, and democratic site for information dissemination and socio-political engagement across borders. However, while some of these memes merely campaigned for particular parties within the ambit of what may be termed ‘reasonable’, most of them were satirical; they disparaged and caricatured parties and individuals especially the president of the country and his appointees without being censored as some traditional media houses were for airing offensive materials. The uncensorability of the youths and the memes that they created definitely impacted significantly on the outcome of the elections making the phenomenon worthy of study. Therefore, through a combination of observation, interview and Focus Group Discussions, this paper critically examines the awareness levels of the youth through the memes. It submits that the outcomes of the elections confirm the centrality of the youths and the mass media in socio-political re-engineering.