Application of Social Media for Rumour Governance in Nigeria

The advent and growth of social media has a considerable impact on governance and this has dramatically changed the entire political landscape not only in Nigeria, but throughout the world. The pervasiveness of social media has made it to become an integral part of public discourse and communication. Academic literature extensively documents the trend, and interrogates its manifestation, especially on the digital media space, the complications in conceptualisation, the basic motivations for creating and sharing it, and the various mitigation strategies. The paper anchors on the logic of trend analysis as it utilizes Rumour Theory and secondary data to interrogate the application of social media for rumour governance in Nigeria. Within this context, it is established that social media serve as a platform for rumour governance in Nigeria. Social media, such as Twitter, Facebook, among others have become the most important channel of public opinion diffusion in governance. Consequently, this study provides the basis to interrogate the manifestation of rumour governance within the context of Nigeria and highlight the concerns it poses. The study concludes that mitigating the scourge within the Nigerian context requires a careful implementation of the various strategies documented in the literature, conscious of their various strengths and limitations in context. On the whole, the study demonstrates that although rumour governance is a global phenomenon, geo-specific and contextual factors are critical towards understanding its manifestation, and have a lot to do with its effective mitigation.