Network signals as national proxies: an analytical demonstration of social signal amplification theory in Nigeria's pre-electoral context

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How do young adults form beliefs about what most of their fellow citizens think? This paper develops and conducts an exploratory empirical test of Social Signal Amplification Theory (SSAT), which proposes that individuals in personalised digital communication environments systematically infer national public opinion from the political signals circulating within their own small, egocentric networks rather than from verifiable nationally representative data. SSAT synthesises and extends foundational accounts of the spiral of silence, filter bubble dynamics, and the third-person effect by specifying a mechanism, network-to-national projection, that these prior frameworks identify but do not formally theorise as a generalisable inference process. Drawing on a purposive sample of 53 politically active young Nigerian adults, the study tracked political content across WhatsApp groups and major social media platforms over five consecutive days during the pre-election debate about INEC's preparedness for the 2027 general elections, yielding 60 coded political signals. Participants subsequently completed a structured perception survey estimating national public opinion. The study's principal finding, a near-perfect alignment between participants' median perceived national support at 46% and a nationally representative benchmark of 45% INEC confidence, is consistent with, though not proof of, a calibration artefact produced by signal balance rather than genuine epistemic access to national data. Supporting this interpretation, a strong Spearman correlation (rₛ = .751, p < .001) was observed between participants' ratings of social circle support and their estimated national opinion percentages, consistent with the network-to-national projection mechanism. The paper treats these findings as hypothesis-generating rather than hypothesis-confirming.

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