Endangered democracies: A comparative study of the 2023 Nigerian presidential election and the rise of Nazism in 1930s Germany

Abstract

Social media has transformed political communication, but its role in facilitating harmful discourse during elections remains underexplored. This study examines how X (formerly Twitter) contributed to the spread of misinformation, hate speech, and political propaganda during Nigeria’s 2023 presidential election. It investigates how election-related hashtags were strategically used to shape public opinion, reinforce political identities, and intensify social and political divisions. A qualitative research design was adopted. Publicly available posts associated with major election hashtags were collected through web scraping using the Selenium package in Python. The data were then analyzed using qualitative textual analysis to identify patterns of misinformation, hate speech, and manipulative political narratives. The findings show that hashtags served as powerful communication tools for amplifying false information, promoting inflammatory rhetoric, and legitimizing exclusionary political discourse. These communicative practices increased political polarization and created conditions that heightened the risk of electoral violence. The analysis also identifies similarities between contemporary digital propaganda and historical patterns of mass persuasion that have contributed to social conflict. This study advances communication scholarship by demonstrating how qualitative textual analysis can reveal early warning indicators of violence in online political discourse. The findings have practical implications for policymakers, electoral management bodies, communication professionals, social media platforms, and peacebuilding practitioners. They support the development of evidence-based strategies to counter misinformation, reduce hate speech, strengthen electoral integrity, and promote peaceful democratic participation in digitally connected societies.