Handbook of Research on Deception, Fake News, and Misinformation Online by Chiluwa Innocent

Author:Chiluwa Innocent
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Information Science Reference

Figure 3.­

The two posts above defensively capture high level of exaggeration of PMB’s administration. The first showcases the Minister of Labour, Dr Chris Ngige, who claims that PMB has done a lot that merit Nigerians’ daily clap for him and his cabinet. The post also features three multimodal elements: linguistic, picture and colour. The linguistic element contains three sentences: two above the picture and one beneath it. First, is a compound-complex sentence, containing two independent clauses and one dependent clause. “Nigerians should be clapping for us on daily basis,” is an independent clause that shows that Ngige is addressing all Nigerians, which implicates they have all benefited immensely from PMB’s administration. The objective personal deixis “us” refers to everybody working with PMB. The dependent clause, “and after thanking God,” shows that he is orienting to the religious life of Nigerians and their relationship with God whom they should always thank for His benevolent acts. Comparing the magnificent acts of God to what PMB’s administration has done for Nigerians, hence, he says, “they should thank us”.

Again, in the second sentence, Ngige claims that God has used Buhari; by placing Buhari in the position of a messiah who has rescued and effected positive turnaround in Nigeria political space. The third sentence beneath the picture is a complex sentence with “I’m surprised” as the independent clause, showing the Mental process. “I” is the Senser, “surprised” is the Mental process, while the phenomenon is that “Nigerians are not clapping for Buhari”. This further justifies the claim that the language use in political discourse is partly psychological. The second element contains two semiotic resources, the minister’s picture to validate or authenticate the source of the information posted on Facebook. The Nigerian flag (green, white, green patterned cloth) at the background in the picture symbolises the authority of the government who the speaker represents.

Figure 3 reveals a statement credited to the Nigeria Vice President who claims that “we”, APC as a party, and PMB and his cabinet, have performed far better than PDP, the main opposition party that they succeeded. The adverbial phrase “within 3 years” shows how the APC-led government has performed relatively better compared with the sixteen years of PDP rule. This again is exaggeration of performance to show self-marketisation and glorification. Few questions to be asked are: who did the rating and by what standard?

This is situated in the context of election which involves the activities that politicians and their supporters carry out in order to persuade people to vote for their political parties in an election. Obviously, figures are pro-government in electioneering period, intended to persuade Nigerians to continue to support the APC-led government in a politically competitive nation like Nigeria. The posts contents are entirely framed as political marketisation which is a significant business in the context of election.

Evocation of Messianic Figure and the Use of Comparative Evaluation

The strategy that is employed to achieve exaggeration of performance is evocation of messianic figure. It describes an act of over estimating the ability

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