Dike Nwadiuto, Deborah (Junior Fellow Representative)

Research Interests :

African History

Geographical Area :

Nigeria

Current Project:

A Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of Twitter Memes used in Discourses around Nigeria’s Elections and Sociopolitics from 2015

This proposed study is aimed at critically analyzing key Internet memes and visual representations of key sociopolitical/electoral critique on (Nigerian) Twitter. It is also aimed at examining the meme culture and the culture of visual representations that is generated as a result. It is proposed with the objective of examining the human, non human and algorithm
processes (and conditioning) through which they all emerge, and how they impact sociopolitical and electoral change discourses and critique in Nigeria- on Twitter and off Twitter. Nigeria’s sociopolitics and elections usually form part of its online discourses on social media, of which Twitter is a major player (through #hashtags, and also, with memes and visual representations as key indicators: for example #endsars and the memes and logos generated through/with them).
This study first proposes a research method of digital/virtual ethnography so as to follow and analyse the selected memes and key visual representations so as to uncover any (complex) layerings of (in)visible technologies and histories. It also proposes an offline ethnography method to examine any influences or lack thereof of these online activities. It will primarily examine the embedded ideologies and power contestations in the selected memes and visual representations, and the underlying offline-online processes of achieving them. In essence, this study will look at the politics of memes/visual representations on Twitter, the sociology of Twitter (in Nigeria), and the democracy of Nigeria (and how it is affected (or not) by Twitter)