Abstract:

This paper is an expansion and a review of a study on “Citizen Journalism as the Fulcrum for Peter Obi’s 2023 Presidential Movement” by Doris Nwosu and Agatha Orji-Egwu, published in AKSU Journal of Communication Research. Their study highlighted the part played by citizen journalism in the projection of Peter Obi’s salient qualities that endeared him to the public and how the role of citizen journalism can make it a fulcrum through which Peter Obi acquired the large following that has translated into a movement. Their study also highlighted some of the messages in social media made by followers of Peter Obi and purposively generated a questionnaire for Peter Obi’s followers to elicit the source of their first conception of Peter Obi’s presidential move and the current sources of information on Peter Obi’s political campaigns. Findings of that study showed that citizen journalism was the major outlet through which Peter Obi’s presidential candidacy had been put forward to the public and this was why the majority of his followers were the citizen journalists themselves. It was also found out that the citizen journalists had become opinion leaders through whom multi-step flow of communication about Peter Obi’s qualities was conveyed to non-users of social media. This review sees Nwosu and Orji-Egwu’s study as very apt, whose findings were very predictive of the outcome of the Presidential election and the Nigerian people’s reactions to the outcome of the election. In other words, citizen journalism had gone beyond social media chattering claimed by opponents of Peter Obi’s Movement at the outset of the Movement. Citizen journalism was able to move Peter Obi from virtual to physical community in the 2023 Presidential Election in Nigeria.