Title:   YOUTHS SOCIAL MEDIA VENTING: A DISCOURSE-ANALYTICAL READING OF A SELECTED COMMUNICATION POSTED ON FACEBOOK ON FEBRUARY 27, 2022.

Abstract
There is no doubt that the emergence of the social media, especially within the last two decades, has significantly elevated social communications and interpersonal relationships across the globe. The social media, strictly conceived as that modality that facilitates social communications through a global linkage of families, friends, and fresh acquaintances, has more than anything else, given energy to the idea of a global village. Whereas families waited for weeks and, sometimes, months to communicate with family members through the now obsolete letter-writing tradition, the social media has fundamentally reduced the time-element in interpersonal and group communications. In recent times, the province of the social media has continued to expand. Among the most popular units of the social media are Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Tik-Tok, Tweeter, among several others. In Nigeria, the social media network has become very popular, especially among the younger generation. Young people now grow up in a world where social media is part of the normal fabrics of life. Most of the social practices which previously occurred in face-to-face interactions are becoming popular too in the social media. Sadly, in spite of the numerous advantages attributed to the social media, this contemporary outlet for social communication has been subjected to various forms of abuse that are extremely unhealthy to the society. In particular, the social network platform called Facebook, appears to be the most popular amongst the younger generation of Nigerians. In the context of the usage of Facebook in Nigeria, many young people have been identified as having an obsession with the use of uncouth and gutter idioms. In this study, then, I have elected to focus on communications from Facebook. The aim is to establish how language use on Facebook is capable of inciting social conflicts across ethnic and religious fronts. The study becomes necessary since we live in a highly volatile nation often marked with ethnic and religious crises. The specific focus of the present study is the language deployed by one Mr. Isa Bayero to vent his emotions, bitterness, and apparent anger in a written communication. The data was collected from the Facebook wall of an online media, SpyNigeria.NG, on the 27th day of February, 2022. SpyNigeria.NG is reputed for carrying out views and reactions from Nigerian youths in their online news platform. Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics theory and Van Djik’s critical discourse theory served as analytical approaches to the study.
Keywords: Youths, social media, Facebook, Nigeria, crisis.

Citations:

Publication Date: 2023-04-06