Networked Social Journalism: Media, Citizen Participation and Democracy in Nigeria

Abstract

In this chapter, I explore the history of the struggles for democracy and inclusion by Nigeria’s traditional media, and show how emergent genres of web-based journalism are supervening upon the traditional media as sites for the push and pull of democratic discourses. I then deploy case-study research to investigate how Nigerian citizens in social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter not only invigorate deliberative democracy, and even democracy itself, by serving as alternative sources of news for Nigerians, but set the news agenda of the domestic mass media. The chapter also highlights the declining social and cultural capital of the Nigerian legacy media, and shows that the profusion of citizen participation in the democratic project through social media networks isn’t always benevolent. It then suggests ways the legacy media can complement, co-opt or contain the luxuriance and exuberance of the social media scene. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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