EVALUATION OF HATE SPEECH ON SOCIAL MEDIA DURING THE 2019 GUBERNATORIAL ELECTION IN DELTA STATE

ABSTRACT

Hate Speech on social media has been elevated to the status of political campaign strategy in Nigeria's elections over the years. “Elections have increasingly become a do-or-die situation with politicians using all means including unfair tactics to ‘capture’ power. Hate speech in Nigeria is mostly credited to political leaders and their ethnic, regional or religious based supporters who neglect the provocative tendencies of hate speech, so long as it enables them to capture and retain political power.The core focus of this study is to evaluate the use of social media as a tool for promoting words in text that conveyed hate speech during the 2019 Delta State gubernatorial election employing the social reference and uses and gratification theory. A mixed design method was used and the research relied on the interpretative method of textual analysis.Findings from the study show that hate speech was not perpetuated by opponents of the various political parties to attack and counter attack one another, rather, these hate comments where used by individual supporters and support groups of the APC and PDP political parties based on ethnicity, violence and religious bias which helped to form the voters opinions and choice of candidate during the 2019 Delta State gubernatorial election. The study concludes that hate speech was used on social media platforms by political parties and their supporters to draw sentiments and carry out their political agenda with less awareness and recourse to integrity and modesty.Against this background, the study recommends that there should be a mindset orientation and reorientation of candidates vying for political positions as well as the supporters of the various political parties on the values of free and fair democracy that is free from hate comments.