Abstract
This paper takes a look at the media representation of an Islamic group in Northern Nigeria Jama’atu Ahlis Sunnah Ladda’awatih wal-Jihad aka Boko Haram and effect these representations has had in shaping ideologies of international public towards the country, and Nigerians towards northern Nigeria.
Terrorism, Islamic group, Media representation, Sensationalisation, Subjectivity, Ideologies, socio-economic, disenfranchisement, Politics, Poverty
Description
The media is responsible for disseminating information and opinion building across political space. People rely on the news to inform them on events in the North, South, East or West, the power of the media and its influence in representation cannot be overemphasized. This talk focuses on media discourse in Nigeria, takes a sociolinguistic approach to deconstructing selected linguistic expressions found in online and print media and the ways these influence the Nigerian audience. We show that some of the lexical items, expressions, semantic load and syntactic collocations influence negative stereotypes and generalizing archetypes in youths and adults who consume these media. This presentation holds consequence for the social values of representation as well as enabling recognition of lexical choices as focal to society.
Communication Panel
