Stance and engagement in E-punch newspaper readers' comments on former president Goodluck Jonathan administration's war against Boko Haram terrorism in Nigeria.

Abstract

Boko Haram terrorism in Nigeria has lingered on for almost a decade. The terrorism has had some effects on Nigeria, and the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan condemned the act, and declared a total war against the group. Linguistic studies on terrorism with bias for Boko Haram have largely dwelt on other areas but the examination of the online readers’ comments on the war against terrorism. Yet, it is capable of revealing the public perception of the government’s success or failure in the war against Boko Haram terrorism, the media intents, and the Boko Haram operations. This study, therefore, examines the discourse strategies deployed by readers, taking different stances on former President Goodluck Jonathan administration’s fight against Boko Haram terrorism, through their comments on the e-Punch newspaper reports. For data, 751 comments, constituting a corpus of 22,512 words on six purposively selected news items on the 2014 e-Punch Newspaper website were sampled. Guided by stance and engagement theory on interaction, the readers’ comments by participants were subjected to discourse analysis. The online readers’ comments on the war on Boko Haram terrorism implicated and condemned the administration while some suggested solutions. Some of their stances were fuelled by religiousity, ethnicity and partisanship. Nevertheless, they deployed different engagement techniques, including questioning, shared knowledge, personal asides, directives, among others, to convince other participants or call the administration to order. It is recommended that e-Punch and other media outlets be proactive in moderating what participants post online in order to curb avoidable crisis.