Setting Political Agenda on Nairaland Nigeria Forum: Who Holds The Sway?

Abstract

This study examined the mainstream media (online) and independent online blogs with the aim of ascertaining who is
setting political agenda on Nairaland Forum through the identification of information source of political posts on the forum.
It is a quantitative research which employed content analysis research design. Sixty political posts were selected through a
systematic sampling technique of picking a post with the highest views on every sixtieth page of the 6308 pages of political
posts on Nairaland Forum. Agenda setting theory and the mediamorphosis served as the theoretical pillars of this study.
Frequency tables and simple percentages were used in analyzing and presenting the data. It was discovered that independent
online blogs are the main sources from which Nairaland members get the political messages forming the substance of
discussion on the forum. On recommendation, both the mainstream media and online news bloggers need to have robust
online sites with all information well archived; online news bloggers should be more professional in their journalistic
activities and credit their source of information, while the mainstream media should endeavour to do more on timely online
reportage of news update and breaking news without waiting for traditional broadcast hour or publishing time.