Aspersions on THEM, praises on US: Evaluating some Facebook posts on the three presidential candidates in the 2023 general elections in Nigeria

Abstract

Language is a veritable tool in the conduct of societal affairs, it can be used to build or destroy a person or a group. This study analyses some Facebook posts on three Nigeria 2023 presidential candidates: Bola Ahmed Tinubu of All Progressive Congress, Peter Obi of Labour Party, and Atiku Abubakar of People’s Democratic Party. Five posts for each candidate were randomly selected making fifteen posts in all, the posts constitute the primary data, while the secondary data are drawn from library and internet sources on the subject matter. The study is anchored on van Dijk’s Theory of Ideological Square (TIS), which contextualises the posts to be of US-THEM categorisation. The specific objectives of the study are: how is hate encoded in the Facebook posts under study; and what are the inferable common ground ideas in the posts that help the projection of the ‘‘US’’, and the backgrounding of the ‘‘THEM’’ in the posts. The findings show that hate is encoded in the Facebook posts through the use of deprecating words on the ‘‘THEM’’. The authors of the posts show lack of interest and confidence in ‘‘the OTHER’’ two candidates. Each author implicitly praised the favoured candidate. This study concludes that the use of negative words in whatever form has the propensity to cause negative reactions, and cast the target(s) in a deleterious light. The study recommends that fans of politicians should avoid the use of negative, and demeaning language, but should use language in a humane manner bearing in mind that each political position is ephemeral, and humans can change, their preferred candidate can change in attitude as time changes.