LANGUAGE IN INDIA

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Volume 25:5 May 2025
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Aftermath of Decolonized Hegemony in Select Novels ? A Socio Political Analysis

Isaiah Aluya and
Jilam Hephzibah Jashina

Abstract

Amid the rising incidents of kidnappings in Nigeria, X (formerly known as Twitter) has emerged as a crucial platform for meaning-making, emotional engagement, and public accountability. This study investigates X users' discursive and multimodal interactions in Nigeria concerning the growing kidnapping problem. It analyses abductions to identify patterns in public discourse, emotional responses, and acts of resistance. Utilising twelve purposively selected tweets - equally divided between textual and multimodal formats - the study employs methodologies from Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA) to explore how meaning is created, contested, and disseminated in online environments. The results indicate a range of discursive techniques, such as nomination, predication, perspectivization, and justification, which are used to allocate blame, show solidarity, or validate institutional responses. Additionally, multimodal components like images, memes, hashtags, and government visuals influence public framing and emotional reactions. While some visual elements reinforce prevailing discourses about the state's power, others challenge these perspectives by highlighting victimisation, systemic flaws, or acts of defiance. The identified linguistic and symbolic patterns show that users actively construct meaning, using ideology and emotion to influence discourse and public opinion. This study contributes to the existing body of research on digital activism and social media discourse in conflict areas by shifting the focus from insurgency and protest to the less-examined issue of kidnapping. It also highlights how sites like X can be used for mobilisation and grieving and how they can frame national insecurity through ideological, symbolic, and emotional perspectives. The study urges scholars and decision-makers to closely examine the discursive and affective dimensions of digital reactions to insecurity.

Keywords: Discursive strategies, social media narratives, kidnapping narratives, public perception, multimodal discourse analysis

Introduction

The surge in kidnappings across Nigeria has emerged as a significant national security concern that remains at the forefront of public debate and news coverage. Recent years have seen a rise in public outrage due to high-profile cases such as the 2014 abduction of the Chibok girls, the Greenfield University incident in 2021, and the mass kidnappings in Zamfara and Niger states during this timeframe. These incidents have prompted both domestic and international reactions. Conversations about the state's vulnerability to kidnappings have taken centre stage in both online and traditional spaces, highlighting growing government ineffectiveness. X (formerly Twitter) has become a crucial political discourse, resistance-building, and civic engagement platform. Users can actively shape the conversation with short comments, memes, images, and hashtags on X, as traditional gatekeeping is absent (Papacharissi, 2015). Following Elon Musk's takeover in 2023, the platform has continued to evolve, influencing content management practices that affect the rise of activism and public dialogue (Newton, 2023). Despite extensive studies on X's influence in insurgency, protests, and political communication (as noted by Jungherr et al. (2019) and Hansson et al. (2022)), few academic investigations focus on how Nigerians discuss kidnapping through discourse and visuals. Users on Nigerian Twitter express emotional responses through viral representations of these crises, blending linguistic and symbolic content. Discussions surrounding kidnapping acquire significant political and ideological meaning when authors employ emotional language, visual symbols, intertextual references, and satirical elements tweets. Although the public tools used by citizens to discuss their experiences regarding kidnappings are often overlooked in analyses that employ discourse and visual methods, they play a crucial role in fostering public awareness and stimulating policy debates on insecurity in Nigeria. Examining digital media communication tools enhances our understanding of their impact on kidnapping incidents and other security issues. This study explores the discursive strategies present in X's discussions about kidnapping. It aims to reveal how public narratives are created and contested and how X functions as a platform for digital activism and ideological debate. The study's objectives include:
1. To identify and analyse the discursive strategies used by Nigerian Twitter users in reaction to kidnapping incidents.
2. To investigate how memes, hashtags, and images influence public perception and emotional responses.
3. To examine how multimodal elements (memes, images, videos, emojis, and hashtags) reinforce or contest dominant narratives about kidnappings.

The following questions will guide the study:
1. What discursive strategies do Nigerian X users employ when discussing kidnappings?
2. How do memes, hashtags, and images affect public perception and emotional responses?
3. In what ways do multimodal elements (including images, memes, emojis, hashtags, and videos) support or challenge the prevailing narratives concerning kidnappings in Nigeria?

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Isaiah Aluya
Department of English and Literary Studies, Bingham University Karu
Nasarawa State, Nigeria
Isaiah.aluya@binghamuni.edu.ng
&
Jilam Hephzibah Jashina
Department of English and Literary Studies, Bingham University Karu
Nasarawa State, Nigeria
hephzoj@gmail.com
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