Framing and the Social Construction of Violence in Select Online News Discourse on the 2023 General Elections in Nigeria

Abstract

Violence undermines the democratic character of elections, and the news discourse is a significant route through which such issue is socially constructed. This study investigates how the Vanguard and Arise News employed transitivity theory as an interpretive schema in framing the violence that marked the 2023 general elections in Nigeria to determine the impact of election violence on voters. Fourteen extracts (7 each from Vanguard and Arise News) as well as responses from 20 participants (5 each from the fields of Journalism, education, accounting and public relations) were purposively selected and analysed using mixed methods comprising descriptive content analysis and in-depth interviews. The findings unveil both news reports’ usage of material, verbal, and relational processes as frames to foreground shades of electoral violence such as the snatching of ballot boxes, disrupting of the voting process, intimidating of voters, disrupting of the collation of results, kidnapping of INEC officials, decimating of innocent citizens, vandalizing of polling units, assaulting of election observers, and carting away of electoral materials. Transitivity processes highlight power relations between groups as well as label certain groups positively and others negatively. The responses from the in-depth interview reveal that electoral violence have a detrimental influence on voters because it produces feelings of dissatisfaction, dread, and dejection in them thereby preventing them from wanting to vote in subsequent elections.