Social Media and Ghana’s 2012 Election Petition—A Discussion
Kirchuffs Atengble · Advances in Journalism and Communication · 2014
For about five decades after independence, the media in Africa had been dominated by traditional mass communication such as radio, television and the print. But with development in internet technologies, coupled with developments in mobile communication devices, such tendencies begun to wane, and the resultant effect was the blend of the old and new media. This paper therefore discusses some of the activities that were threaded on social media platforms, and then identifies particular effects that such activities had on the petition sessions. As social media was deemed to have been critical in the Arab Spring of 2010, and in the general political landscape of the continent (campaigns, political rallies, elections, etc.), it has also been a significant part of the 2012 Election Petition Hearings in Ghana.