ASSESSING THE EFFECTS OF NEW MEDIA AND THE CHANNELS FOR ACCESSING POLITICAL NEWS IN WEST AFRICA: A CASE OF GHANA AND NIGERIA

In recent times, the rapid change in technology keeps on affecting every aspect of life. The advent and proliferation of the internet is one example which has also found its way to how people access political information and news. Previous research has focused on looking at the influence of the media on the audience while others looked at the mistrust in the new media. Through the usage of a quantitative research method with a total number of 199 respondents from Ghana and Nigeria to an online survey, this study discovered that a large number of people read political news through online media while others sometimes listen to the radio in these two regions. The print media was the lowest rated as people's interest in reading the hardcopy has dwindled. The paper concludes that people in Ghana and Nigeria are prone to the usage of new media for political news as compared to the mainstream media. Therefore, mainstream media should invest adequate resources in improving their online presence and the quality of their news content in the online platforms.