Computational Propaganda and Automated Political Communication in Nigerian Social Media: A Multi-Method Investigation

This study employs a multi-method computational and ethnographic investigation of automated political communication and computational propaganda in Nigerian social media, making original empirical and methodological contributions to the study of political manipulation in emerging democracy contexts. Computational propaganda, the use of automated accounts, algorithms, and big data to manipulate political opinion, has been studied primarily in Western contexts, leaving a significant gap in understanding how it operates in African political systems with different party structures, ethnic political mobilisation, and lower platform transparency. This study combines large-scale computational analysis of 4.8 million political social media posts from Nigerian Twitter and Facebook during the 2019 and 2023 election cycles using bot detection algorithms, network analysis, and natural language processing, with ethnographic fieldwork among political party digital operatives (18 participants) and focus groups with politically active social media users in six geopolitical zones (72 participants). Original methodology contributions include a context-adapted Nigerian political bot detection model trained on locally annotated data and a hybrid computational-ethnographic protocol for studying online political manipulation. Findings reveal systematic deployment of bot and troll farm networks in both election cycles, with significant innovation in tactics between cycles including greater use of WhatsApp-based closed group coordination and diaspora account networks. Political party investment in computational propaganda is documented across party lines. Platform response is characterised as systematically slower in Nigeria than in comparable election contexts. The study contributes original Nigerian computational propaganda data, a methodological framework, and recommendations for electoral integrity interventions.

Keywords: computational propaganda, political bots, Nigerian social media, electoral communication, automated accounts.