Examining the role of social media and mobile social networking applications in socio-political contestations in Nigeria

Social media platforms continue to flourish as practices encompassing them become deeply embedded in many cultures. As more people embrace social media platforms, their affordances and opportunities are leading to improved communication, and helping hold authorities to account. To further scrutinize the importance of these platforms, this study interrogates the role of digital media in socio-political contestations in Nigeria by examining the media used to mobilize, coordinate, and document the 2020 #EndSARS protests in Nigeria. Analyses of survey data collected in 2020 during the protests in Lagos and Port Harcourt, Nigeria (N = 391) show that demonstrators who were 30 years and older and used WhatsApp and Facebook to learn about the protests as well as coordinate their participation in the protests are more likely to report participating on the first day of the protests than protesters who are younger than 30 and used other media platforms. Findings further illustrate that digital enthusiasm facilitated by hedonic-experiential and epicurean communication on WhatsApp and Facebook eventuated a process of emotional contagion through connective repertoires that created propitious emotional conditions for mass collective protest actions. Finally, the article discusses how the use of WhatsApp and Facebook gave protesters strategic communicative power during the protests.</p

A Privacy-Friendly Architecture for Mobile Social Networking Applications

The resources and localization abilities available in modern smartphones have provided a huge boost to the popularity of location-based applications. In these applications, users send their current locations to a central service provider and can receive content or an enhanced experience predicated on their provided location. Privacy issues with location- based applications can arise from a central entity being able to store large amounts of information about users (e.g., contact information, attributes) and locations (e.g., available businesses, users present). We propose an architecture for a privacy-friendly location hub to encourage the development of mobile location-based social applications with privacy- preserving features. Our primary goal is to store information such that no entity in our architecture can link a user’s identity to her location. We also aim to decouple storing data from manipulating data for social networking purposes. Other goals include designing an architecture flexible enough to support a wide range of use cases and avoiding considerable client-side computation. Our architecture consists of separate server components for storing information about users and storing information about locations, as well as client devices and optional com- ponents in the cloud for supporting applications. We describe the design of API functions exposed by the server components and demonstrate how they can be used to build some sample mobile location-based social applications. A proof-of-concept implementation is provided with in-depth descriptions of how each function was realized, as well as experi- ments examining the practicality of our architecture. Finally, we present two real-world applications developed on the Android platform to demonstrate how these applications work from a user’s perspective

Investigating the Privacy vs. Forwarding Accuracy Tradeoff in Opportunistic Interest-Casting

Many mobile social networking applications are based on a ``friend proximity detection" step, according to which two mobile users try to jointly estimate whether they have friends in common, or share similar interests, etc. Performing ``friend proximity detection" in a privacy-preserving way is fundamental to achieve widespread acceptance of mobile social networking applications. However, the need of privacy preservation is often at odds with application-level performance of the mobile social networking application, since only obfuscated information about the other user\u27s profile is available for optimizing performance. noindent In this paper, we study for the first time the fundamental tradeoff between privacy preservation and application-level performance in mobile social networks. More specifically, we consider a mobile social networking application for opportunistic networks called interest-casting. In the interest-casting model, a user wants to deliver a piece of information to other users sharing similar interests (``friends"), possibly through multi-hop forwarding. In this paper, we propose a privacy-preserving friend proximity detection scheme based on a protocol for solving the Yao\u27s ``Millionaire\u27s Problem", and we introduce three interest-casting protocols achieving different tradeoffs between privacy and accuracy of the information forwarding process. The privacy vs. accuracy tradeoff is analyzed both theoretically, and through simulations based on a real-world mobility trace. The results of our study demonstrate for the first time that privacy preservation is at odds with forwarding accuracy, and that the best tradeoff between these two conflicting goals should be identified based on the application-level requirements

Mobile Internet and Contentious Politics in Nigeria:Using the Organisational Tools of Mobile Social Networking Applications to Sustain Protest Movements

This study investigates the impact of mobile social networking applications in the organisation of protest movements by examining how protesters documented their participation during the 2020 #EndSARS protests as well as evaluating the themes that emerged from online activists’ tweets during the 2022 #EndSARSMemorial2 protests in Nigeria. Data for this study was obtained from a survey conducted in 2020 during the protests in Lagos and Port Harcourt, Nigeria (N = 391), and a qualitative content analysis of tweets and replies (N = 67,691) from the 2022 #EndSARSMemorial2 protest in Nigeria. Results show that there is a substantial relationship between how protesters document their participation and their day of joining the protest. Findings also demonstrate that protesters used social media platforms accessed via mobile phones to display their anger and anguish, imprecate the authorities, and rouse solidarity contagion, which ignited a memorial march for fallen activists in Nigeria. Finally, data illustrate that activists in Nigeria use these successive memorial protests to sustain the #EndSARS protest movements and their demands.</p

Can You Please Put Your Phone Away? Examining how the FOMO phenomenon and mobile phone addiction affect human relationships

This study attempts to identify how attachment to social media as well as attachment to other forms of communication technology can lead to addiction to mobile devices and affect non-virtual interpersonal communication. I examined the phenomenon known as the fear of missing out, or FOMO, which can be defined as apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent. Experiencing FOMO can lead to overuse of and even addiction to social media, another category I examined, because addicted individuals want to stay more up-to-date with social networks and social media is the most efficient way to do so. This, by default, also connects to overuse of mobile devices due to ease of access with mobile social networking applications. This addiction is linked to loneliness and depression in and of itself, but the general overuse of mobile devices also has negative effects on interpersonal face-to-face communication, the final category that I researched. Numerous studies showed that the use or even mere presence of a mobile phone decreased interpersonal trust in conversation partners. Therefore it can be inferred that excessive social media use can lead to loss of non-virtual connections. Further research into the psychological impact of virtual communication addiction is needed to explore these incredibly new phenomena and help to prevent addiction and negative associations with new technologies.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/uresposters/1146/thumbnail.jp

Social Media Influence on Exclusive Breastfeeding Among Expecting Mothers in Port Harcourt

While social media have the potential to help expecting and lactatingmothers learn the profits of, and steps to actualise exclusivebreastfeeding, studies in health communication in Nigeria have failedto adequately interrogate the role of digital media in the actualisationof exclusive breastfeeding. This study bridges that gap by exploring theuse of social media for the actualisation of exclusive breastfeeding inRivers State. This study reports on the response from a quantitativesurvey of breastfeeding mothers (N=200) in three General Hospitals inPort Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria. Findings suggest thatbreastfeeding mothers in Port Harcourt that reported receivinginformation about and learning about exclusive breastfeeding throughsocial media platforms are more likely to report actualising exclusivebreastfeeding, controlling for all other factors in the model. Based onthe findings, we conclude that social media are the most efficientmeans of communicating exclusive breastfeeding information andmessages following the availability and portability of internet-enabledmobile phones. We therefore recommend that social media be adoptedas the flagship media for communicating exclusive breastfeeding inPort Harcourt metropolis

Social media, Keyboard Disruptors, and Fake Protesters during protest movements in Nigeria

Social media platforms continue to flourish as practices encompassing them become deeply embedded in many cultures. As more people embrace social media platforms, their affordances and opportunities are leading to improved communication, and helping hold authorities to account. While social media do help to hold authorities to account, those in leadership roles are beginning to use these platforms to bolster their perverse objectives. To understand the latter better, this study aims to examine methods that the Nigerian authorities adopted to discredit, disrupt, and conceal the killing of protesters during the 2020 #EndSARS protests in Nigeria. This study adopts a mixed methods approach comprising of qualitative content analysis of tweets and replies (N=10,622) regarding critical and counter tweets about the protests, and responses from a semi-structured interview (N=20) of ‘fake protesters’ during the 2020 #EndSARS protests. Findings show that the Nigerian authorities adopted a two-throng approach of using hoodlums to perpetrate violence with the hope of destabilizing the protests, and used influencers and celebrities online to disrupt, destabilize and conceal the killing of protesters during the 2020 #EndSARS protests in Nigeria. The paper contributes to knowledge in three ways. First, it empirically conceptualizes Keyboard Disruptors. Second, the paper uncovers that while social media platforms have decentralized communicability, that they, however, have improved the capabilities of the authorities in the dissemination of propagandistic materials as well as having the capabilities to repress a protest movement. Third, the study delineates a typology of protest disruption tactics during the 2020 #EndSARS protests in Nigeria

Social media, Keyboard Disruptors, and Fake Protesters during protest movements in Nigeria

Social media platforms continue to flourish as practices encompassing them become deeply embedded in many cultures. As more people embrace social media platforms, their affordances and opportunities are leading to improved communication, and helping hold authorities to account. While social media do help to hold authorities to account, those in leadership roles are beginning to use these platforms to bolster their perverse objectives. To understand the latter better, this study aims to examine methods that the Nigerian authorities adopted to discredit, disrupt, and conceal the killing of protesters during the 2020 #EndSARS protests in Nigeria. This study adopts a mixed methods approach comprising of qualitative content analysis of tweets and replies (N=10,622) regarding critical and counter tweets about the protests, and responses from a semi-structured interview (N=20) of ‘fake protesters’ during the 2020 #EndSARS protests. Findings show that the Nigerian authorities adopted a two-throng approach of using hoodlums to perpetrate violence with the hope of destabilizing the protests, and used influencers and celebrities online to disrupt, destabilize and conceal the killing of protesters during the 2020 #EndSARS protests in Nigeria. The paper contributes to knowledge in three ways. First, it empirically conceptualizes Keyboard Disruptors. Second, the paper uncovers that while social media platforms have decentralized communicability, that they, however, have improved the capabilities of the authorities in the dissemination of propagandistic materials as well as having the capabilities to repress a protest movement. Third, the study delineates a typology of protest disruption tactics during the 2020 #EndSARS protests in Nigeria. Keywords: digital activism, social media, soro soke, #EndSARS, Keyboard Disruptors, Fake Protesters DOI: 10.7176/NMMC/105-07 Publication date:December 31st 202