Network Analysis of Information Flows in Nigerian Twitter Political Communities: A Longitudinal Study

This study conducts a longitudinal network analysis of information flow patterns in Nigerian political communities on Twitter from 2020 to 2023, making original theoretical and methodological contributions to the study of digital political communication in Africa's most populous democracy. Understanding how political information flows through social networks, who the structural information brokers are, and how network architecture shapes exposure to diverse or homogeneous political viewpoints is fundamental for democratic communication theory. This study employs a computational social science methodology, collecting and analysing a longitudinal dataset of 8.2 million tweets from Nigerian political Twitter accounts using a combination of social network analysis, topic modelling, and temporal sequence analysis. Key network metrics including centrality, clustering, bridge positions, and community detection are computed at monthly intervals to track network structure evolution. Information diversity metrics assess the exposure of network communities to cross-partisan and cross-ethnic viewpoints. The theoretical contribution builds on network agenda-setting theory and network gatekeeping theory, extending both to the Nigerian digital political context. Findings reveal three distinct political community clusters corresponding to presidency-aligned, opposition, and civil society-dominated information environments, with minimal cross-community information bridges. Echo chamber intensity has increased significantly over the study period. Bot accounts occupy disproportionate bridge positions between communities, suggesting artificial information cross-pollination. Verified journalist accounts show declining bridge centrality as political account influence increases. The study contributes an original longitudinal Nigerian political network dataset, theoretical extensions, and platform regulation recommendations.

Keywords: network analysis, Twitter, Nigerian politics, information flow, echo chambers.