Discursive Strategies in Selected Newspapers’ Reports on (in) security in Nigeria
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Date
2022
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Abstract
News reporting on security situations mainly manipulates discursive and representational strategies in portraying people, actions and events either negatively or positively based on certain prejudiced ideologies. This paper examines salient discursive strategies deployed by Nigerian newspapers’ reporters on insecurity to represent socio-political ideologies in their reports on herdsmen and banditry. Data comprises 22 instances of discourse strategies drawn from three Nigerian newspapers published between March 2018 and December 2021. By integrating insights from van Dijk’s (2006) Critical Discourse Analysis, findings reveal that both Nigerian newspaper’ reports on insecurity create polarity of positive in-group and negative out-group ideologies through seven discursive strategies which include slanted headlining, negative labelling, evidentiality, number game, hyperbolism, victimization and depersonalization. The study found out that there is a link between the strategies and ideologies as the strategies embody ideologies. The strategies embody ideological prejudices of positive self and negative other-representations which are rife in both nations’ news reports on the insecurity reports in Nigeria.