Impact of Social Media on Political Behaviour among Youths in Imo State, Nigeria.

Concern over Youths political engagement have attracted attention of political stakeholders as well as the interest of scholars in political communication and electoral studies. Being a global phenomenon resulting from hybrids of deterministic causations, youth civic and political engagement receives attention from multi-theoretical and cross disciplinary perspectives with diversifying prognoses. From media centric perspective, the quality and quantity of information, access to, and representation in the media have been isolated as causes of Youth political malaise. Political economy theorists, for instance blame the hyper-commercialization of the media in a post­ materialist world for the political apathy being experienced by the youth. A corpus of studies, mostly from advanced democratic climes are however, challenging the monolithic notion on youth's political engagement. Premised on the social media affordance, these alternative viewpoints believe that youth may not be engaging in electoral politics, they are exploiting other participatory repertoires created by the new communication ecology. Giving these mixed findings, that are mostly Western centric, we explore the forms of political behaviours of young people in Imo State, South-East Nigeria within the theoretical prism of Civic Volunteerism Model. Findings revealed that social media political campaign s have positive relationships with both online and offline political participation, with online participation begin higher, even after controlling for political interest, political knowledge and political efficacy. The results have practical and policy implications that need to be addressed to guarantee the future of participatory political culture.