Scholarly Works Communication & Language Arts

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://repository.ui.edu.ng/handle/123456789/325

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Author: search.filters.author.Egbunike, N. A.

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    From digital advocacy to age reduction legislation, the story of Nigeria’s #nottooyoungtorun
    (Department of Mass Communication, Imo State, Owerri, 2021) Egbunike, N. A.; Onyechi, N. J.
    The #NotTooYoungToRun, a global campaign to expand youth inclusivity in politics. The Nigerian campaign, championed by the Youth Initiative for Advocacy, Growth and Advancement (YIAGA), employed both digital and offline advocacy to demand a reduction in the constitutional age limit for contesting elections in the country. With the aim of making politics, especially the right to be voted for, more accessible for young people. This paper employed qualitative content analysis of 904 manually purposively selected tweets from the #NotTooYoungToRun Twitter hashtag. Six dominant themes: victory/inspirational youth movement, activism, youth participation, solidary/endorsement, partisan bickering, and ageism. The context of the representative tweets were provided by exemplar tweets provided under each theme. The finding revealed that Nigerian youths demanded and achieved the signing of the 2018 Age Reduction Act. This victory was based on a systematic social media campaign in which the youths advanced their message. In so doing, they set public agenda by getting influential young Nigerians to either endorse their message or/and highly placed publicly show their solidarity. In addition, Nigerian youths engaged politicians who pushed the legislation through parliament, until it was signed into law by the Nigerian president. The #NotTooYoungToRun campaign is an exemplar of how youth driven movements have harnessed digital media for social and political change.
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    Nature of tweets in the 2015 Nigerian presidential elections
    (IGI Global, 2015) Egbunike, N. A.; Ihebuzor, N.; Onyechi, N.
    Social media is becoming increasingly important as a means for social engagement. In Nigeria, Twitter is employed to convey opinion and make commentaiy on matters ranging from football to politics. Tweets are also used to inform, advocate, recruit and even incite. Previous slttdies have shown that Twitter could be effective for political mobilization. However, there is dearth of research on how Twitter has been used as a purveyor of neutral and/or hate speech in the Nigerian context. This study examined the nature of tweets in the immediate aftermath of the 2015 presidential election in Nigeria. The authors employed content analysis of 250 purposiveiy selected tweets from the #Jgbo hashlag which trended between March 29 and 31, 20! .5. The tweets were then categorized into five explicit hate and one neutral tweet category respectively. Results revealed the dominance of three hate tweet types: derogatoty, mocking and blaming. These findings were then discussed bearing in mind earlier theories on the functionality of tweets and voting patterns from an analysis of the election results.