Abstract
The #BringBackOurGirls hashtag in Nigeria produced a political culture that has subsequently assured the surveillance and restraining of juridical power by netizens in the country. Internet memes and viral hashtags in Nigerian social media serve as important visual and performative expressions of a digital culture practice that articulates online participatory politics as a playful yet serious intervention in the public sphere. This paper pinpoints the varied ways Nigerian social media users both ‘participated’ in the 2015 electoral process through online popular culture, highlighting how, as the 2019 election approaches, they continue to archive their interactions with power structures through the agency of viral hashtags and Internet memes.
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Yeku, J. (2018). The Hashtag as Archive: Internet Memes and Nigeria’s Social Media Election. In: Adelakun, A., Falola, T. (eds) Art, Creativity, and Politics in Africa and the Diaspora. African Histories and Modernities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91310-0_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91310-0_11
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Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
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Online ISBN: 978-3-319-91310-0
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