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How social media failed to predict The Voice Nigeria season 2 winner

The audience and judges of 'The Voice Nigeria' season 2 tried using sentiment analysis of social media mentions to predict a winner, and once again, they failed.

Vox Populi, Vox Dei.

The above is a common Latin phrase translated to English to mean: "the voice of the people is the voice of God" and in recent times, the voice of the Twitter populace has proven to be a loud one, and one to be taken seriously. But then, it is not the voice of all the people; it is not the voice of ‘God’.

There have been many attempts during the past years to predict reality TV show winners and, except for the 2017 Big Brother Naija, social media has rarely succeeded.

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On Sunday, September 24, 2017, Team Timi's Idyl emerged the winner of The Voice Nigeria season 2, defeating strong contenders and viewers’ favourites such as Jahtell, Syemca and J'dess to achieve this.

Idyl is a talented and passionate singer. With versatile vocals that can do justice to a John Legend or  Lucky Dube’s song, and a charisma and stage presence that didn’t appear to fail, Idyl endeared himself to quite a number of viewers from his rendition of Bez's "Zuciya Daya" at the blind auditions; the effect of this performance was not lost on the judges as it earned him 4 chair turns. He was quite a charmer.

But, he wasn't the social media audience choice. They wanted Jahtell, an energetic performer with formidable vocals. Several tweets and polls had declared Jahtell, Syemca and J'Dess the likely winners, but with over 10 million votes, ‘reality’ declared Idyl the winner.

is the word to describe social media reactions after none of the above-mentioned contestants emerged the top two.

For some, Idyl's win wasn't the most shocking thing about the night. Actually, following the turn of events, for the viewers, his victory prevented a level of shock that would have been indescribable.

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There was Team Pato's Ebube, a contestant who social media had repeatedly described as the least talented contestant, emerging the 1st runner-up. That was the most shocking event of the night, perhaps more shocking than Jahtell not making it to the top 4.

Everyone was surprised - social media audience, fellow contestants and even the coaches.

"We live in strange times," a shocked Timi Dakolo said.

Just like most of the viewers, the judges had trusted a plenitude of online data, which had put Jahtell and Syemca's odds of winning at about 80%.

But, social media failed them, and if past events were considered, it shouldn’t have been quite a rude shock. Take for instance, the previous season, the then buzz leader and viewer’s favourite, Chike, emerged the 1st runner-up. The buzz was not enough to bring home the kill.

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Angry social media users forget that Social media isn’t a representative of the voting population. They also forget that many Twitter poll respondents, who said they were voting, did not vote. It can be assumed that they were arguably unaware of the enormous offline population that were rooting and actually voted for Ebube and Idyl.

Nigerians tried using sentimental analysis of social media mentions to predict a winner, and once again, they failed.

As expected, The Voice Nigeria is under attack for 'selecting the winner based on popularity votes rather than their singing ability.' However, these days, almost all competitions are determined via public voting; just as in a democratic society, the people are given the right to decide who they want as their winner.

The downside of popularity contests is that talent sometimes loses while popularity and other factors get to decide a winner. This means that for instance, a contestant with the ability to buy a huge number of votes can easily emerge the winner.

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On this season of The Voice Nigeria, the judges were stripped of their power to save a contestant the moment the contestants were narrowed to the top 12.

The Voice Nigeria season 2 lost several talented acts before the finals, such as Bada, Shapera, Glowire and Precious, because the public failed to vote for them to be retained on the show.

This outcome of this season and the backlash from the viewers ask if it is time to quit popularity contests and allow the judges who are, presumably, experts in evaluating singing ability, decide a winner. The next season will provide us with an answer to this question.

While we continue to wait for the ideal structure, we once more say, congratulations Idyl.

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