Did Television Make You Change Your Choice of Candidate?
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Communication Studies Forum,Department of Mass Communication,Faculty of Arts,University of Nigeria ,Nsukka
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Television is a very potent medium that can be used to reach millions of viewers at the
same time. Because it combines sound and pictures together, its power seems multiplied.
Due to these, many have chosen it as the choice medium to use to pass across messages
to different people. Politicians have characteristically routed their messages through the
channel that carries their messages to the largest number of people. In Nigeria, television
has been enthusiastically used by politicians to reach members of the electorate. Their
main reason is to capture the votes of these citizens through convincing messages and
spots. Most of the voters may not know those contesting on a one-to-one basis. However,
television broadcasts bring unending images and messages from the contestants to the
voters .in their different homes. Some of the voters may have made up their minds on the
particular contestant that they wanted to vote for before or even after exposure to television
broadcasts. Focussing on voters in Ado Odo/Ota communities, this paper sought to
establish if television broadcasts influenced these voters into changing their minds from
their initial candidates of preference to another because of what they watched on television
during the 2007 Nigerian presidential election. It was found that indeed television caused
voters' shiftfrom one candidate to another. Importantly, this shift was more pronounced in
the urban than in the rural areas. Most of the voters that changed their minds were the
undecided voters who were still wavering between opinions on whom to vote for.
Nevertheless, most of the voters, especially the older ones remained resolute in their
decisions to vote for their candidates of choice.
Keywords
H Social Sciences (General)