Tracking Social Media
The Social Media Tracking Centre and the 2011 Nigerian Elections

Shehu Musa

Yar’Adua Foundation

About the Authors
Dr. Judith Burdin Asuni is the Executive Director of Academic Associates PeaceWorks, a Nigerian NGO working in the fields of conflict management, peace and development and peace education. Dr. Asuni has researched and written extensively on conflicts in Nigeria, particularly in the Niger Delta. AA PeaceWorks has established a social media team to engage Nigerian youth on their participation in building a better Nigeria. Mrs. Jacqueline Farris serves as Director General of the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Foundation and is also responsible for development of the Foundation’s programmes which focus on public policy, research, education and charitable activities. Mrs. Farris co-edited Nigeria at Fifty: Contributions to Peace, Democracy & Development with Professor Attahiru Jega, Chairman of INEC, as well as the official biography of late Shehu Musa Yar’Adua.

About The Social Media Tracking Centre
Mr. Amara Nwankpa, an IT professional and member of the Enough is Enough coalition led a group of young tech savvy volunteers to explore how social media platforms worked during the 2011 Nigerian election period; what trends developed; possible course corrections and what groups could learn from one another’s experience. This report documents an unusual story of cooperation among civil society groups and individuals, INEC, foreign partners and Nigerian government agencies. It includes extracts from Mr. Nwankpa’s power point presentations at weekly briefings.

It is becoming more and more difficult to escape the influence of the media on our lives. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of living in a media-rich society.

The influence of media on our lives has increased dramatically over the past 50 years with the development of technology. First, it was the newspaper, then the telegraph, radio, telephone, television and now the internet. Living in a media-rich society has not only good parts, but it also has drawbacks. Some of the advantages and disadvantages will be discussed in this order.

One of the best advantages of media is the fact that information spreads around the world very fast. People can find out news about things that have happened on the other side of the world within few minutes from the moment of the event only by accessing the internet or by watching television. Another advantage of living in a world invaded by media consists of the huge amount of information delivered to citizens. Just by reading a newspaper, one finds news about many fields, for instance: sports, politics, economics, education and so on. Furthermore, being surrounded by media means that citizens are always aware of new products that appear on the market.

However, living in a media-rich society does not come only with advantages, but disadvantages, too. For example, the information delivered to people through commercials is very often distorted in order to convince people to purchase a product they don't even need. Furthermore, the content of the information can be disturbing for some people. Take as an example children who navigate on the internet: only by accessing an ordinary link, a pop-up window with adult content can open, without children's permission or awareness. Also media is used by governments to manipulate people, controlling the information that is delivered by television to society. From these examples it can be concluded that media can have a bad influence on our lives.

Following the analysis of the advantages and disadvantages it is obvious that media is a powerful tool and people need to be extremely aware of the power and influence media can have on our society.