I) INTRODUCTION
A) Background information
Democracy can be defined as a system of politics where the citizens of the country are allowed to provide their contributions to the governance issues in the country. Democracy is, therefore, a state where the citizens are actively involved in the running of different sectors of the economy by the government of the day. Social Media is an interactive media that is based on the web and originates from a group of media that is referred as social networking and allows interacting and exchanging information through the internet. Some of the most common forms of social media include Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Linked In, YouTube, Snap Chat, Whatsapp and Telegram (Omede & Alebiosu, 2015, p. 3). The contribution of social media in the United States and Canada is evidenced by the fact that there are many government agencies in the
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There are opportunities that have been brought about by the internet, but concomitantly, there are challenges that have presented themselves as well. The opportunities are however immense, and this is aided in a large part by the fact that it has taken power to communicate away from a few individuals and presented it to the larger population. The cost of setting up the conventional forms of media was significantly high, and this made it difficult for many participate in the conventional form of communication. Therefore, the internet eliminated the barrier of the high cost of setting up a media channel of communication by making it easier for anyone with access to the internet to create and share their content to the world and also receive the same. Also, access to the internet has also made it easier for people to interact easily with other people from all corners of the earth and further participate in debates that foster democracy (Coronel, n.d, p.