Perceived Usefulness of Facebook in Sharing Political Campaign Messages During The 2023 Governorship Election in Delta State Nigeria

in which the manner in which Facebook users might have interacted with campaign messages and why the platform might seem more or less useful to groups can be explained. When voters were majorly exposed to and engaged with information that paralleled their partisan orientations via friend connections, influencers and pages and algorithmic curation, Facebook would not be used as a balanced information environment but as a reinforcement channel that E-ISSN 2545-529x condenses existing preferences (Pariser, 2011; Bode & Watts, 2015). This dynamic has practical implications: a selective exposure can increase the level of polarization and decrease political tolerance, and also predispose the audiences to misinformation, which supports their beliefs (Mutz, 2006; Lazer et al., 2018). The campaign communication and civic education implication is two- fold, namely, campaigns can use strategic framing of messages in a manner that attracts to the preexisting identities, whereas the discourse of democracy can be enhanced by the increase in media literacy and critical evaluation of information to promote the broadest possible exposure and limit the consumption driven by preconceived notions (Hobbs, 2010; Levine et al., 2016). 2.3 Empirical Review The digital communication has become extremely rapid and this has substantially impacted the politics in Nigeria and the other parts of the world. Oyedele and Fawole (2024) were looking at how social media and Facebook specifically affected the 2023 elections in Nigeria in terms of electoral turnout. By use of surveys and focus groups, they quoted that Facebook helped them to mobilize voters and a substantial number of those interviewed reported having heard about the candidates and their policy positions. Content analysis and surveys were employed by Enahoro and Okoro (2024) to evaluate the effectiveness of Facebook in contributing to building trust in gubernatorial campaigns in Edo and Delta States, and the authors found that posts that are supposed to be policy-oriented to build trust and perceived usefulness, and posts that are emotion-oriented or inflammatory to reduce credibility. The behavioral experiments of an Ekiti State 2022 election, Ogundele and Shittu (2024) discovered that viewing conflicting Facebook messages and misinformation lowered perceived usefulness and elevated voter cynicism, and that perceived usefulness was affected by authenticity and factual consistency to create trust. With the aid of the Elaboration Likelihood Model, Agbasimelo and Ignatius (2024) have conducted a survey of Facebook multilingual political messages in the 2023 elections and discovered that posts in Pidgin and local dialect were perceived as more relatable and useful, particularly among less-educated and rural respondents. Inobemhe, Ja’afaru and Garka (2024) used Facebook political campaigns in multimedia application, through conducting content analysis, interviewing and discovered that videos, images, and infographics were more useful in engagement and memory, but visual misinformation could also decrease credibility. In a study by Talabi et al. (2024), 309 postgraduate students were surveyed, and the responses were that Facebook campaign messages containing a clearly identifiable and credible source were more commonly deemed useful. Bassey, Kente, Akpede, and Ogande (2024) evaluated Nigerian presidential 2023 social media strategies and found infographics, hashtags, and short videos as the fundamental promoters of virality and engagement and noted that high engagement did not necessarily correlate with informational value. Using a survey of 381 voters, Ogande and Arowolo (2024) found that more intense contact with Facebook campaign material was related to the increased likelihood of voting in the 2023 presidential election. According to Okon, Ojedor, and Owolabi (2024), an agenda-setting framework was used to compare Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Instagram and discovered that Facebook was the leading platform used in the creation of political narratives in Nigeria in 2023. Surveying the small business owners (Enugu and Anambra States). Morah and Uzochukwu (2024) discovered that the Facebook was perceived as cheap and accessible as a means to obtain and disseminate political information, many of the respondents expressed their doubt regarding the credibility and quality of the information and content without evidence or policy depth. Duru (2024) assessed the role of Facebook in political participation of Nigeria in the 2023 general elections by conducting a E-ISSN 2545-529x national survey based on Uses and Gratification and Technological Determinism and found that Facebook was used to mobilize and share information across socioeconomic lines and had issue of credibility and propaganda. Okafor (2023) used surveys and focus groups to compare the respondents of Facebook campaign messages in the 2023 general elections in Anambra State, with students more engaged but most times found content irritating and civil servants more inclined to share posts and that campaign content was described by respondents as both persuasive and intrusive. According to a huge survey reported by Duru (2023), Facebook played a major role in mobilizing young voters in the 2023 general elections and the recorded higher engagement by those candidates who maintained a consistent presence and used multimedia formats. In a survey of 600 respondents modeling campaign strategy efficacy on Facebook in the 2023 general elections, Chinedu and Ekong (2023) determined that live streams and interactive features are linked to higher perceptions of transparency and engagement and video messages were more trustworthy than plain-text posts. In a study conducted by Capozzi et al. (2023), Facebook ads of the 2019 EU parliamentary elections (more than 45,000) revealed a higher number of impressions with content loaded with emotions irrespective of the type of party. In their article, Suemo, Kusugh, and Okonkwo (2023) surveyed and interviewed Facebook-based campaigning about ideological framing in the 2023 general elections in Nigeria and found that divisive or ethnocentric ideologies decreased trust and turnout intention, and polarizing, emotion-sensitive ideologies decreased perceived usefulness among moderate and undecided voters. A survey by Asaolu (2023), of 800 voters less than 35 in five Nigerian states, such as Delta, revealed that Facebook was the platform with the most political awareness but a smaller number of respondents stated that the content directly influenced their voting behavior. Okonkwo and Dike (2023) explored digital storytelling by interviewing 100 respondents in four southern states and discovered that narratives about human interest made campaign posts more responsive and useful. Egwemi and Akpan (2023) surveyed the nationally and conducted expert interviews and indicated that Facebook was a widely used platform to reach out to voters in the 2023 elections but was more effective in providing updates rather than communicating detailed policies. 2.4 Literature Gaps Empirical studies reviewed indicated that Facebook was significant during the recent elections in Nigeria, although most of the evidence was based on the participation, engagement and narrative impact, rather than on what users think are useful or not. As an illustration, various studies attributed Facebook use to voter mobilization and turnout, agenda-setting, and overall political participation (Oyedele and Fawole, 2024; Okon, et al., 2024; Duru, 2023; Duru, 2024). Other groups investigated the effects of message characteristics on attention and credibility, including emotional framing and virality (Bassey et al., 2024; Capozzi et al., 2023), ideological messaging (Suemo, et al., 2023), multimedia formats and interactivity (Inobemhe, et al., 2024; Chinedu and Ekong, 2023), and language choice (Agbasimelo and Ignatius, 2024) and credibility cues (Talabi et al. 2024). These studies s