Social Media Monitoring Liberia’s Midterm Special Senatorial Elections and By-Elections

Political actors continue to increase the use of social media in spreading their messages. A recent LEON survey found that over half of people living in urban areas of the country use Facebook regularly. As, with many other countries, use of social media may be both positive as a way to keep in touch or negative, as a means to spread disinformation, misinformation or even hate speech. Since March 2020, LEON has been monitoring public and private Facebook pages of politicians and political commentators. Beginning October 2020 LEON has focused on the candidates for December 2020 Special Senatorial Election and also posts around the Referendum. Sites are being monitored for their own content but also for third party postings, reposting or trolling. Analysis focus on who is being trolled most, and by whom, why are they being trolled and the specific language being used. Hate speech, incitement and/or dangerous speech is also flagged where it occurs.

This is the second report election monitoring report from LEON. The first can be found  on our website and contains a detailed description of definitions and methodology.