Discourse of Digital Civic Engagement : Perspectives from the Developing World

This book is an impressive collection of chapters which investigates the role that digital communication technologies play in political discourse and civic engagement in Nigeria, Africa''s largest democracy. The collection, written by fifteen seasoned African scholars and, drawn from diverse backgrounds approaches digital civic engagement from different perspectives of discourse analysis, such as, critical discourse analysis, corpus-assisted discourse model, socio-semiotic approaches and multimodal discourse analysis, computer-mediated discourse analysis, appraisal theory, as well as sociolinguistic and applied linguistic approaches. The authors demonstrate how the Internet has become the space for citizens'' participation in the process of democratisation, as well as the key driver of change in many developing nations. The process of civic engagement which manifests through the verbal and visual semiotic resources on different social networking spaces, such as online newspapers feedback forums, Facebook, Badoo, Twooo, texting and instant messaging, discussion forums, political cartoons, and Charismatic religious sermons are explored. This book is a must read for researchers who are interested in the discourse of online civic engagement in the developing world.