Sexuality as a medium for political communication in Nigeria’s EndSars protest

Bibliographic Data

ID7154334
AuthorsSharon Adetutu Omotoso (0000-0003-2200-5286, University of Ibadan, corresponding author), Adeola O Opesade (0000-0001-9241-2798, University of Ibadan)
Year2025
Volume25
Issue6
Pages1454-1479
Publication date2025-08-18
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueFeminist Media Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1468-0777 • E-ISSN: 1471-5902
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14680777.2025.2514055
OpenAlexW4411250799
LanguageEN
References cited58

The October 2020 EndSARS protest spotlighted social media dimensions and unfolding impacts to protest culture in Nigeria. Of specific interest to this study is how words depicting sexuality during protests mediate between political actors and processes, ultimately morphing into political communication. This study adopts a mixed critical content analysis research method. To highlight embodied mediatization as political communication, we engage critical qualitative analysis of the tweets that contained the selected keywords such as “breast,” “buttock,” “hair,” “rape,” “beat” during the EndSARS protest. These keywords thematized under sexual identities and violence were drawn through the review of extant literature and engaged to formulate the search term used in retrieval of the counts and contents of tweets posted on twitter (Now X) between August and December 2020. Quantitative analyses in the form of descriptive and textual data mining analyses were carried out on the collected data using Microsoft Excel 2013 and Orange Data Mining Tool, respectively. Findings reveal an alignment of the sensual, the intimate and the sexualized, demonstrating how the body, which is often targeted as a site of policing can also be redeployed to challenge such oppressions and transgress the dichotomy between the public and the private

Human sexuality · Media studies · Political communication · Political science · Politics · Sociology · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues · Gender Studies · Law · Media Influence and Politics · Media Studies and Communication

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