A critical discourse analysis of fake news and hate speech among Nigerians in selected social media sites.
| dc.contributor.author | Adewuya, Abiola Omotayo | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2025-09-17T10:28:41Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2025-09-17T10:28:41Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2023 | |
| dc.description | xv, 221p | |
| dc.description.abstract | The study identified the patterns of language use in fake news and hate speech among Nigerians on the selected social media sites. It analysed the discursive strategies projecting identities and ideologies in the selected texts. It further described the use of language militating against peace and or promoting discord in the selected texts and discussed the implications of the use of language in the Nigerian context. All these were done with a view to uncovering the underlying issues of identity and ideology in the Nigerian wider contexts. The study used both primary and secondary sources of data. The primary source comprised 50 purposively selected fake news and 50 purposively selected hate speeches making 100 altogether. Among the 10 commonly used social media platforms in Nigeria, Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp were selected based on perceived popularity and acceptance among Nigerians. The secondary source included books, journal articles and the Internet. The study adopted van Dijk’s socio-cognitive model of CDA with bias for his ideological square drawing insights from Gumperz’s Interactional Sociolinguistics to analyse the data. The results showed that discourse producers on social media used patterns of language including lengthy titles, capital letters, lexicalisation, punctuation marks and slangy words/expressions in the fake news and hate speeches to emphasise issues and present people. The study also revealed that social media users discursively used language to showcase Self and Other identities in ethnic, religious, social and political forms with the use of figures of speech e.g. consonantal alliteration, metaphor, irony and synechdoche while ideologies of marginalisation, ethnic and religious biases etc. were expressed with discursive strategies such as actor description, categorisation, example/illustration, evidentiality, generalisation, national self(de)glorification, number game among others. It further revealed that fake news and hate speeches’ discursive features reflect negative presentations of different ethnicities and political office holders which mitigate against peace and/or promote discord in Nigeria. Finally, the study found that the implication of language use in fake news and hate speech on social media reflects resistance to domination and power abuse of the political class in the Nigerian context. The study concluded that fake news and hate speech on the social media reflect individual and collective ideologies reflective of the socio-political nature of Nigeria through which different identities are marked. | |
| dc.identifier.citation | Adewuya, A.O. (2023). A critical discourse analysis of fake news and hate speech among Nigerians in selected social media sites, Department Of English, Faculty Of Arts, Obafemi Awolowo University. | |
| dc.identifier.other | ror.org/04snhqa82 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://ir.oauife.edu.ng/handle/123456789/6937 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.publisher | Department Of English, Faculty Of Arts, Obafemi Awolowo University. | |
| dc.title | A critical discourse analysis of fake news and hate speech among Nigerians in selected social media sites. | |
| dc.type | Thesis |