Dear Ifukor, I have been working on this area as far back as 2002 with Innovation in Advertising: An Appraisal of Nigeria's Internet Marketing (Unpublished B.A. Thesis, Communication & Language Arts Department, University of Ibadan, Nigeria). I also did Semiotic Anlysis of Computer-Mediated Communication in Selected Instant Messages of Nigerian Students for my M.A. thesis at the same Department. Published version of this can be viewed at ckbg.altervista.org/WordPress/wp-content/uploads/2008/.../shoki-paola.pdf I also have a chapter publication in Studies in Slang and Slogan published by Lincom-Europa 2010, where I focus on the the linguistic slang of Nigerian Internet Fraudsters. So far, I have been engaging in Internet Studies/New media for close to a decade, and on it I am doing my Ph.D, using the theoretical frameworks in Discourse Analysis (Pragmatics) and Cultural Studies. Let me know where I can be of help. 'Wale Oni Communication Studies Unit; Department of Languages & Linguistics College of Humanities & Culture Osun State University, (Ikire Campus) Nigeria +234 8056673899 alt.email: olawaleoni@ymail.com -----Original Message----- From: Presley Ifukor <pifukor@yahoo.com> To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Sent: Sat, Dec 18, 2010 6:42 am Subject: [Air-L] Blogs & Twitter Research in the Nigerian Context I am new to the list and was wondering if there's anyone working on Nigerian Internet discourse / communication. My paper on "Blogging and Twittering the Nigerian 2007 General Elections" has just been published in the December 2010 issue of Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society: http://bst.sagepub.com/content/30/6/398 This article examines the linguistic construction of textual messages in the use of blogs and Twitter in the Nigerian 2007 electoral cycle comprising the April 2007 general elections and rerun elections in April, May, and August 2009. A qualitative approach of discourse analysis is used to present a variety of discursive acts that blogging and microblogging afford social media users during the electoral cycle. The data are culled from 245 blog posts and 923 tweets. The thesis of the study is that citizens’ access to social media electronically empowers the electorates to be actively involved in democratic governance. Electronic empowerment is a direct result of access to social media (and mobile telephony) by more citizens who constitute the electorates. This encourages more public discussions about politics and makes the democratic process more dynamic than in the pre-social media era. An analysis of the data shows that there is a dialectical relationship between social media discourse and the process of political empowerment. The paper is part of my PhD at the University of Osnabrueck, Germany. The project's synopsis and related publications are here: http://www.ifaa.uni-osnabrueck.de/Sprachwissenschaft/PhdProjects-Ifukor Thank you and best of the season, Presley Ifukor Osnabrueck, Germany _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/