本研究的目的是了解社群媒體在政黨競選活動中的作用。目前的文獻主要集中在,西方民主國家的競选和選舉中使用社群媒體，發現政黨使用社群媒體的程度不同，指出了幾個可能重要的因素。本研究將重點關注在互聯網、政黨資源和種族作為影響社群媒體使用的因素。本研究利用來自 twitter 和 Facebook 的數據，以了解互聯網的滲透率、以規模衡量的政黨資源和種族賦權等因素如何影響加納、肯亞和奈及利亞等國的政黨如何利用社群媒體。由於這些國家在制度設計、社群媒體環境和當代政治格局方面的相似性，因此選擇這些國家是因為它們構成了可比較的案例。研究結果表明，這三個因素都被證明對政黨使用媒體平台產生影響。

The aim of this study is to understand the role that social media plays in the campaign of political parties. Current literature has concentrated mainly on social media use in western democracies campaigns and elections, finding that there is different extent of social media use by political parties, pointing to several factors that might matter. This research will concentrate on internet access, party resources and ethnicity as elements having influence on social media use. The research will be conducted as a pilot study utilising data from twitter and Facebook in order to understand how have factors of internet penetration, party resources measured by size and ethnic empowerment influenced how political parties in countries of Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria utilised social media. These countries are chosen as they constitute to comparable cases, due to their similarities in institutional design, social media environment and contemporary political landscape. Findings of the research show that all three factors are proved to exercise impacts on the use of media platforms by political parties.

Table of Contents
I. Thesis validation letter i
II. 摘要 ii
III. Abstract iii
IV. Table of figures v
V. Table of tables vi
VI. Introduction 1
Motivation 1
Research Purposes 4
VII. Literature Review 6
Definition and importance of Web 2.0 6
Internet Penetration 7
Debate between Normalization and Equalization 11
Ethnic Fragmentation and Empowerment 15
Ethnopopulism in Africa 20
VIII. Research Design and Methods 23
Comparable case design 23
Comparability across the cases studied 24
Institutional comparison 24
Social media environment 26
Current Dynamics of Party politics 29
Research Scope and Framework 34
Research methods 35
Operationalisation 35
Computer-Assisted Analysis 41
Content Analysis 42
IX. Result Analysis 42
Internet Penetration and party usage of social media 43
Normalization vs. Equalization effect debate 46
Ethnic empowerment and party usage of social media 50
Discussion 60
Summary of Findings 63
X. Conclusion 66
Limitations 66
Topics suggested for future studies 68
Concluding remarks 69
Bibliography 72

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