Discourse and visual strategies in framing internet fraudsters in selected Nigerian newspapers

Abstract

Fraudulent activities on the Internet have become a challenge to unsuspecting internet users. Informed by the observation that the representation of internet fraudsters and their activities in the media still remains a blind spot for researchers especially within the ambit of linguistics and allied areas, this work critically examines the discourse and visual strategies that are deployed by selected Nigerian newspapers to frame internet fraudsters and their activities. Excerpts of news reports published by four national newspapers, The Punch, Nigerian Tribune, The Nation, and Vanguard, between January 2021 and May, 2021, which contained both texts and pictures about internet fraudsters, constitute the data for this study. Theoretical insights were gleaned from van Leeuwen's social actor approach to critical discourse analysis and Halliday's transitivity model. Four textual (identifying, stating, narrating and indicting) and visual (individualisation, collectivisation, location and colouration) strategies each were deployed in framing internet fraudsters as moneybags, youths, students, fetishists, impersonators and drug peddlers. Nigerian newspapers frame internet fraudsters as social actors whose actions have substantial socio-economic implications in the country.