The Role of New Media in Youths’ Protests and Agitations: An Interrogation of Civic Activism in #Endsars

The digital age, with its new media, has brought transformation and innovation to information transmission. This has not only diversified communication routes but also made it easily accessible to people in a globalised community. It has created a means through which people express themselves and share ideas, especially regarding happenings in the world around them. The new media has also introduced a new dimension to protest culture among citizens, especially youths. The #EndSARS protest of 2020 against police brutality and Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), unfortunately, turned tragic and has left a twist in the youth’s unrest and protest culture in Nigeria. Youth grievances further spurred the protest focused on other discontent situations, such as poverty, unemployment, non-inclusion in governance, poor infrastructure, and insecurity. This paper focuses on new media as a popular phase of digital technology. It probes the use of new media, its effect, success, and challenges within the context of the #EndSARS protest. Furthermore, it examines the role of the new media in propelling, coordinating, and organising the protest and the protesters. To achieve this, the study adopts a quantitative research method through a questionnaire designed as a research instrument to gather data from youths (18-39) who are the target audience. The questionnaire investigated the role of the new media during protests and examined how digital technology has become central to recent civil agitations among Nigerian youths. The findings of this research establish that social media platforms have transformed civil protests in the digital age. It also reaffirms the role of digital platforms in connecting, transforming, and revolutionizing protests and agitations for the present and the future. The paper concludes that if properly harnessed by youths and the Government, the new media will become a pedestal to build a new generation of patriotic, responsive, and active citizenship in Nigeria.

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