A Critical Discourse Analysis of Ethnic Identity Construction on Twitter During Nigeria's 2023 Election Campaign

Abstract

The paper examined politicians' discursive construction of ethnic identities for Self and Others on Twitter during campaigns for Nigeria's 2023 presidential election. The study drew insights from van Dijk's socio-cognitive and Leeuwen's social actor approaches to critical discourse analysis for its theoretical framework. Data collection procedure involved purposive gathering of posts circulated by Nigerian political actors on Twitter between 28 September, 2022 and 23 February, 2023. The study revealed ideological influence on the strategic construction of identity for political candidates and their supporters during the campaigns. In addition, it highlighted the use of processes, nominal, pronominal, metaphors, code switching/mixing, and strategies of argumentation, collectivization, genericisation and negative presentation of others as means of constructing citizens' identities based on ethnic ideology. The findings have implications for Twitter as a platform for constructing the notion of citizenship in Nigeria's evolving democratic environment.