Discursive strategies in Nigeria’s 2015 Facebook campaign discourse

Abstract

This article examined the discursive strategies employed in Facebook feedback comments which were circulated during Nigeria’s 2015 general elections’ campaigns. This was done with a view to revealing citizens’ calculated struggle for access to state resources. Data for the study comprise 2000 selected comments posted on the Facebook walls of Jimi Agbaje of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and Akinwunmi Ambode of the All Progressives Congress (APC) from January to April 2015. The data were analyzed using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) approach, with emphasis on Fairclough’s discourse as social practice and notions from sociolinguistics and Computer-Mediated Discourse (CMD). The study reveals that commenters employed discursive strategies in the form of categorization of social groups, code switching for inclusive/exclusive discourse and representation of political groups through party symbols to characterize the in-group and others positively/negatively, respectively. Viewed against Nigeria’s challenging socio-cultural background, it could be argued that the comments though deployed to persuade reflect unequal power relations among the country’s citizenry.