Ghana’s 2016 Presidential Election: A Study of Electoral Campaigns in the Age of Social Media.

Abstract

Political Parties across the world have in recent time’s integrated social media as part of their campaign strategy to woo voters online. This is because social media has proven to be an effective medium for electoral communication given its several features like photo sharing, status update, tags, post sharing, likes, live videos, video sharing among others. Most importantly, social media facilitates access to political information and its networked structure enables users to create interest groups, interact with each other and engage in political debates. This study explores the various ways social media is revolutionizing political campaigns in Ghana using the 2016 election campaigns as a case study. It argues that the extensive integration of social media tools particularly Facebook in the 2016 electoral campaigns has introduced newer forms of campaigns in Ghana. Although social media was used extensively in the 2016 election campaigns in Ghana, it did not replace the traditional media rather it augmented the parties’ efforts to reach many voters.