A Latter-Day Sodom and Babylon

Abstract

This chapter examines the manner in which Nigerian bloggers and web journalists interpreted, framed and represented Obama's gay rights diplomacy in Nigeria. The chapter specifically explores the extent to which these web journalists' interpretations of the American pro-gay movement generated new religion-inspired representations of the U.S. government and Americans on the social networks. The study is based on a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of over 162 online articles generated by Nigerian citizen journalists in reaction to Obama's gay rights advocacy in Nigeria and Africa. It answers the following research questions: how did Nigerian web/citizen journalists frame Obama's pro-gay move? What was their tone? How did they represent America and its people in their articles or posts? And how did religion and culture influence the latter's representations of America and Americans?