THE ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE POLICE REFORMATION IN NIGERIA: A

CASE STUDY OF 2020 ENDSARS PROTEST

HASSAN ABIDEMI IBRAHIM

U/17/PS/0316

PROJECT SUPERVISOR

PROF. M.K.O ALIMI

BEING A RESEARCH PROJECT SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT

OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, COLLEGE OF MANAGEMENT AND SOCIAL

SCIENCES, ODUDUWA UNIVERSITY, IPETUMODU,

OSUN STATE.

IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE

AWARD OF BACHELOR OF SCIENCE (B.Sc.) DEGREE IN

POLITICAL SCIENCE.

AUGUST, 2021

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Title Page

Certification

Dedication

Acknowledgement

Table of Content

List of Tables

ABSTRACT

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the study

1.2 Statement of the problem

1.3 Objective of the study

1.4 Research Questions

1.5 Significance of the study

1.6 Scope of the study

1.7 Limitation of the study

1.8 Definition of terms

CHAPTER TWO: REVIEW OF LITERATURE

2.1 Review of concepts

2.2 Review of Empirical studies

2.3 Theoretical Framework

CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.1 Research Design

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3.2 Population of the study

3.3 Sample size determination

3.4 Sample size selection technique and procedure

3.5 Research Instrument and Administration

3.6 Method of data collection

3.7 Method of data analysis

3.8 Validity and Reliability of the study

CHAPTER FOUR: DATA PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS

4.1 Data Presentation

4.2 Answering Research Questions

CHAPTER FIVE: SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION

5.1 Conclusion

5.2 Recommendation

References

Appendix

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 ABSTRACT

This study was carried out to examine the role of social media on the police reformation in
Nigeria using the 2020 EndSARS protest in Lagos State as a case study. The study examined if
social media significantly contributed to the reformation of police in Nigeria. The study
employed the survey descriptive research design. A total of 270 responses were validated from
the survey. From the responses obtained and analysed, the findings revealed that social media
contributed to the 2020 EndSARS protest in Nigeria. Furthermore, the findings also revealed
that social media played a significant role in the reformation of police in Nigeria. The study
recommend The federal government of Nigeria should look into the reasons behind the protest
that caused chaos and uproar in all the 36 states in Nigeria and enact laws and structures that
bring to an end the brutality of SARS in Nigeria. More so, the federal of Nigeria should carry
out a thorough check on all members of the SWAT force and their academic qualifications to
ascertain their eligibility for the work.

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 CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the study

For any country to quell mostly internal insurrection, aggression, and combat crime as well as

maintain peace and protect lives and properties of the citizens, there is need for the establishment

of the security department whose personnel execute their functions not arbitrarily to the laws of

the country but with severe adherence to rules and constitutional provisions of the country. This

need in Nigeria led to the establishment of SARS.

The Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) was founded in late 1992 by former police

commissioner Simeon Danladi Midenda when Col. Rindam of the Nigerian Army was killed by

police officers at a checkpoint in Lagos in September 1992, later leading to the arrest of three

officers. When the information reached the army, soldiers were dispatched into the streets

of Lagos in search of any police officer. The Nigerian police withdrew from checkpoints,

security areas, and other points of interest for criminals; some police officers were said to have

resigned while others fled for their lives. Due to the absence of police for two weeks, the crime

rate increased and SARS was formed with only 15 officers operating in the shadows without

knowledge of the army while monitoring police radio chatters. Due to the existence of three

already established anti-robbery squads that were operational at that time, Midenda needed to

distinguish his squad from the already existing teams. Midenda named his team Special Anti-

Robbery Squad (SARS). After months of dialogue the Nigerian Army and the Nigeria Police

Force came to an understanding and official police duties began again in Lagos. The SARS unit

was officially commissioned in Lagos following a ceasefire by the army after settlement and was

one of the 14 units in the Force Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department, which was

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established to detain, investigate, and prosecute people involved in crimes like armed robbery,

kidnapping, and other violent crimes.

With the way that the world has been made a global village where information about countries,

their activities and that of their officials are easily accessed anywhere in the world on the internet

through the mass media made people to easily criticize activities and actions of the government

when they are not pleased with it. Information is now at the tip of the people’s finger which has

helped the public not to be eluded with the happenings around them.

The advent of the internet in the 1990s led to major developments in the world of

communication. Today the Internet has taken a firm place in people's lives. It is difficult to

imagine a young man who at least once a day did not check for updates in social networks and

did not leaf through the news lines. The modern reality requires us to stay in touch and keep

abreast of the recent happenings around the globe. Social Media are interactive computer-

mediated technologies that facilitate the creation or sharing of information, ideas, career

interests, and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks. There is no doubt

the emergence of the internet has immensely contributed to the introduction of social networking

sites (SNSS). The coming into being of these sites revolutionized the world of communication

and today we celebrate its improvement ranging from education to entertainment. Recent study

have shown The evolution of the internet has led to its usage as the best of communication

whereby two-third (2/3) of the internet world‘s population visit social networking sites (SNSs)

thus serving as communication and connection tools. These networking sites are referred to as

social media (Boyd and Ellison, 2007).

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Social networking has become a common international trend which has spread its reach to almost

every corner of the world. The use of Social media sites has exploded and evolved into an online

platform where people create content, share it, bookmark it and network a prodigious rate.

Online technologies have continued to erase the line between the traditional media and their

audience. This significant success has been facilitated by the two-way communication system

which social media provides than the one-way broadcast method of the traditional media. Social

media have given masses a voice which the traditional media though committed to achieve has

not yet totally achieved. With the continuous improvements in information and communication

technologies and increasing possibilities for ubiquitous internet connectivity, more freedom is

anticipated for using social media whenever and wherever one wants. Relating to freedom, and

as indicated by Nielsen (2012), social media (appearing in the form of MySpace, LinkedIn,

Facebook, Mebo, Twitter and others) continue to alter the way in which humans access,

generate, share and use information (Cabral, 2011). With the possibility for more freedom (i.e. of

connectivity and access) regarding networking online anywhere and at any time, it is not difficult

to note that social media use will remain a regular aspect of humans everyday life since it

facilitate speedy information dissemination around the world.

1.2 Statement of the problem

One of the events that accompanied the later part of year 2020 after the covid 19 pandemic and

the enactment of the company and allied matters act (CAMA 2020) by the President of the

federal republic of Nigeria is the uproar in the country by the citizens on the EndSARS protest.

EndSARS (or #EndSARS) is a decentralised social movement against police brutality in Nigeria.

It was a call for the federal government of Nigeria to scrap the Special Anti-Robbery

Squad (SARS), a controversial unit of the Nigerian Police with a long record of abuses. The

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protests started in 2017 as a Twitter campaign using the hashtag #ENDSARS to demand

the Nigerian government eliminate the force which after experiencing a revitalization in October

2020, mass demonstrations were occurring throughout Nigeria in major cities, and the hashtag

has had over 28 million tweets. Nigerians have shared their experiences and video evidence of

how members of SARS engaged in kidnapping, murder, theft, rape, torture, unlawful arrests,

humiliation, unlawful detention, extrajudicial killings, and extortion in Nigeria all over the

internet and social media. SARS officers have been alleged to profile youths based on fashion

choices, mount illegal road blocks and searches, conduct unwarranted temperature checks, arrest

without warrant, rape women, and extort young Nigerians for driving exotic vehicles and using

laptops and iPhones. All this uproar has led to killings of protesters, burning and destroying of

public and private properties in the country. As the protest was at the peak of it, the Nigerian

government on Sunday, 11th October 2020 announced it was dissolving SARS and to carry out a

reformation of the police force to serve the citizens better. This study therefore, seeks to

ascertain the role social media played in the 2020 EndSARS protest towards the reformation of

police force in Nigeria.

1.3 Objective of the study

The primary aim of this study is to find out the role of social media in the police reformation in

Nigeria: a case study of 2020 endsars protest. Specifically, the study seeks to:

1. Find out how the social media contributed to the 2020 EndSARS protest in Nigeria.

2. To ascertain if social media played a significant role in the reformation of police in Nigeria.

1.4 Research Questions

The following research questions guides this study

1) How did social media contribute to the 2020 EndSARS protest in Nigeria?

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2) What significant role did social media played in the reformation of police in Nigeria?

1.5 Significance of the study

This study will help government and policy makers align and realign laws and policies to fit into

the demand of the populace to create an environment that will promote and protect the rights of

the citizens, rule of law, protection of lives and properties as stated as the major function of the

security personnel and restrict the abuse of power of security personnel in the country. Also, this

study will serve as reference materials for further studies.

1.6 Scope of the study

This study is limited to the contribution of social media to the 2020 EndSARS protest and police

reformation in Nigeria. The study will examine residents from Lagos state, Nigeria.

1.9 Definition of terms

Social media: Social media are forms of electronic communication which facilitate interactive

social networking base on certain interests. Social media include web and mobile technology. It

is a group of internet-based applications that builds on the ideological and technological

foundations of Web 2.0 and allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content.

Internet: Internet can be defined as an interconnected computer networks that use the standard

internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide. It consists of millions of private,

public, academic, business and government networks that range from local to global scope that

are linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless and optical networking technologies.

Media: media are all those media technologies that are intended to reach a large audience by

mass communication. They are messages communicated through a mass medium to a number of

people. According to “Wikipedia” Media are the communication outlets or tools used to store

and deliver information or data. The term refers to components of the mass media

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communications industry, such as print media, publishing, the news media, photography,

cinema, broadcasting, and advertising.

Reformation: making changes to something with the intention of setting it back on the right

path.

SARS: The Special Anti-Robbery Squad was a Nigerian Police Force unit created to deal with

crimes associated with robbery, motor vehicle theft, kidnapping, cattle rustling, and firearms. 

Protest: a statement or action expressing disapproval of or objection to something.

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 CHAPTER TWO

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

INTRODUCTION

Our focus in this chapter is to critically examine relevant literatures that would assist in

explaining the research problem and furthermore recognize the efforts of scholars who had

previously contributed immensely to similar research. The chapter intends to deepen the

understanding of the study and close the perceived gaps.

Precisely, the chapter will be considered in three sub-headings:

 Conceptual Framework

 Theoretical Framework

 Empirical Review and

2.1 CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

Social Media

The term “Social media” is defined as the application that allows users to converse and interact

with each other; to create, edit and share new forms of textual, visual and audio content, and to

categorize, label and recommend existing forms of content (Selwyn 2012). Social media

therefore denotes to the wide collection of Internet based and mobile services that connect people

together to communicate, participate, collaboratively interact, discuss and exchange ideas and

information on an online community.

Social Media Sites

In recent time, the world has witnessed what could be referred to as communication

revolution through ‘technological advances and increased use of the Internet’ (Moqbel, 2012).

This communication revolution, as well as the more technologically empowered lifestyle of

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individual users, has changed the way people communicate and connect with each other (Coyle,

2008; O’Murchu, Breslin & Decker, 2004). Social networking sites are a recent trend in this

revolution (Moqbel, 2012).

Social networking sites therefore, are web-based services that allow individuals to

construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users

with whom they share a connection, and view and traverse their list of connections and those

made by others within the system, (Boyd and Ellison, 2007).

Social networking sites are created to take care of variety of human needs and could be

classified using that format. For instance, Ellison, Steinfield, and Lampe (2007:143) classified

SNSs into: work-related contexts (LinkedIn.com), romantic relationship initiation

(Friendster.com), connecting those with shared interests such as music or politics

(MySpace.com), or the college student population (Facebook). It should however be noted that

the examples mentioned above were based on the original intentions of founders of the SNSs,

though these intentions have been taken to another level by users.

This is why latter classification of SNSs takes somewhat different approach and put

different factors into consideration. To Fraser and Dutta (2008), SNSs should better be classified

into the following five categories- egocentric/identity construction social networking sites such

as Facebook and MySpace; opportunistic social networking sites for business connections such

as LinkedIn; community social networking sites representing cultural or neighborhood groups;

media-sharing social networking sites such as YouTube and Flickr; and Passion-centric social

networking sites for sharing common interests such as Dogster.

Social networking sites came on board in the mid 1990s. One of the first social

networking sites was Classmates, a site initiated in 1995 (Rooksby, 2009). The uniqueness of

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social networking sites is that they not only allow individuals to meet strangers but enables users

to discuss and make visible their social networks. This results into connections between

individuals which otherwise is not possible through any other media already existing. Maximum

time is often used on social networking sites to communicate with people who are already

friends or acquaintances in the social network, sharing same mindset or same interests and views

(Raj Jain, Gupta & Anand, 2012).

While SNSs have implemented a wide variety of technical features, their backbone

consists of visible profiles that display an articulated list of friends who are also users of the

system. Profiles are unique pages where one can type oneself into being. After joining an SNS,

an individual is asked to fill out forms containing a series of questions. The profile is generated

using the answers to these questions, which typically include descriptors such as age, location,

interests, etc. Most sites also encourage users to upload a profile photo. Some sites allow users to

enhance their profiles by adding multimedia content or modifying their profile's look and feel.

Others, such as Facebook, allow users to add modules that enhance their profile. Structural

variations around visibility and access are one of the primary ways that SNSs differentiate

themselves from each other.

The public display of connections is a crucial component of SNSs. The friends list

contains links to each friend's profile, enabling viewers to traverse the network graph by clicking

through them. On most sites, the list of friends is visible to anyone who is permitted to view the

profile, although there are exceptions. Most SNSs also provide a mechanism for users to leave

messages on their friends' profiles. This feature typically involves leaving comments, although

sites employ various labels for this feature. In addition, SNSs often have a private messaging

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feature similar to webmail. While both private messages and comments are popular on most of

the major SNSs, they are not universally available.

The background of today's social networking sites according to Boyd & Ellison

(2008:214) cited in Roblyer, McDaniel, Webb, Herman, and Witty (2010), began in 1997 with

the launch of SixDegrees.com which “allowed users to create a profile list of their friends and in

1998, surf the friends list”.

Social networking is as old as humans have been around. Just as in nearly every other

species, humans have an instinctual need to be communicated with, and share thoughts, ideas,

and feelings about their daily lives. Only the tools with which we communicate have changed

over the Millennia (Safko, 2010:5). Social media make it possible to share such information like

photos, videos, audio files, and comments. These sites seem to be gaining such high popularity

among users. This point was aptly emphasized by Stefanone, Lackaff, and Rosen (2010) when

they affirmed that explosion in popularity of social networking sites (SNSs) represents one of the

fastest uptakes of communication technology since the web was developed in the early 1990s.

Even though the list is endless, some examples of these SNSs include Facebook, Twitter, Blogs,

2go, YouTube, MySpace, BB messenger, LinkedIn, WhatsApp and Wikis just to mention but a

few. Some of these forms of social networking sites are further discussed below.

Facebook

Facebook is a social networking device that enable users interact through conversations,

and build relationships by networking with other users. Facebook groups are created as part of a

smaller community within the social networking site and focus on particular interests or beliefs

about certain issues (Graybill-Leonard, Meyers, Doerfert & Irlbeck 2011). As of January 2008,

Facebook has more than 64 million users, and since January 2007 has had an average of 250,000

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new registrations per day. It has 65 billion page views per month, and more than 14 million

photos are uploaded to its site daily (Gane, & Beer 2008). A more vivid picture of this growth

was painted by Kaplan and Haenlein (2009) when they affirmed that:

By January 2009, Facebook had registered more than 175 million active users. To put

that number in perspective, this is only slightly less than the population of Brazil (190

million) and over twice the population of Germany (80 million). At the same time, every

minute, 10 hours of content were uploaded to the video sharing platform YouTube. And,

the image hosting site Flickr provided access to over 3 billion photographs, making the

world-famous Louvre Museum’s collection of 300,000 objects seem tiny in comparison.

Safko (2010:8) identified Facebook as being by far the most popular and widely used

social network. By the end of 2013, Facebook boasted 1.23 billion monthly active users

worldwide, adding 170 million in just one year. According to Facebook, 757 million users logon

to Facebook daily as of 31 December, 2013.

The use of mobile phones especially smart phones and the internet have made it possible

for people to communicate and respond to just about any issue in their environment. This is in

line with Hill (2010) assertion that the proliferation of mobile digital media and communications

technology appears to have partially democratized image-making and media creation.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is an online professional contact database that was founded in December

2002 and launched in May 2003. The site allows its members to create a profile and network

with the other over 55 million LinkedIn members from over 150 industries. LinkedIn was

established by former PayPal vice president, Reid Hoffman. Brown (2010) asserts that with over

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55 million registered users throughout the world, LinkedIn is considered a premier business

networking site.

Like many other social and professional networks, LinkedIn has searchable

groups wherein a member can create a group about a particular topic and other members can join

the group to discuss a common interest or industry, hobby, college, religion, or political

viewpoint. LinkedIn Groups are similar to forums.

WhatsApp

WhatsApp has become one of the very popular social networking applications, especially

patronized by students in this part of the world. WhatsApp was founded in 2009 by Brian Acton

and Jan Koum, both veterans of Yahoo!, and is based in Santa Clara, California

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp).

WhatsApp Messenger is a cross-platform mobile messaging application which allows you

to exchange messages without having to pay for SMS. WhatsApp Messenger is available for

iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Phone, Android and Nokia. Other than simple text, it also enables

images, audios or videos to be shared instantaneously. As 3G and Wi-Fi technologies are gaining

popularity all around the world, and more and more people are replacing their cellular phones

with smart phones, the number of WhatsApp users is growing. Its cross-platform feature also

enables people to exchange messages between different brands of smart phones. In addition to

the basic text messaging functionality, it also supports multimedia messages, which enriches the

context of the messages. More importantly, it connects to the server via the Internet, and only

requires the user to have a data plan for the 3G services or to have access to Wi-Fi coverage.

However, a major privacy and security issue has been the subject of concern for

WhatsApp. Corey (2011) submits that “the primary concern was that WhatsApp required users to

16
upload their entire mobile phone's address book to WhatsApp servers so that WhatsApp could

discover who, among the users' existing contacts, is available via WhatsApp”. While this is a fast

and convenient way to quickly find and connect the user with contacts who are also using

WhatsApp, it means that their address book was then mirrored on the WhatsApp servers,

including contact information for contacts who are not using WhatsApp.

Nonetheless, WhatsApp provides two options for users who wish to save their chat

history: creating a backup of it or exporting it as a text file that can be sent over email (Larrien,

& Eric, 2012). According to Kim (2012), WhatsApp has crossed the 10 billion text messages sent

milestone since launching in June 2009” and Murphy, (2013) adds that it has further exploded

over the last year with over 7 billion inbound messages a day as of January 2013. It has more

than 10 million downloads on Android with 369, 270 user reviews, and it is used in about 195

countries on 750 networks.

Twitter

Twitter is one of the most used social media platform for news tweet. Broersma and

Graham (2012), comment that since its launch in July 2006, Twitter has quickly become popular.

The social networking service allows its users to post 140 character long messages (tweets) to be

distributed to users’. Its subscribers (followers) grew to 190 million users per month in June

2010 with 65 million tweets posted per day. As the number of users is rising, that is also how the

various potentials of social media are being sold to other unaware members of the public.

Brown (2010) observed that tweets can be responded to in several ways. You can send a

reply that can be seen publicly, you can reply privately with a direct message, or you can forward

a message to others using the re-tweet feature so that others can view your posts. You can also

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use Twitter to talk about anything – from what you had for lunch to the government’s latest

budget cuts. The illustration below best presents the opportunities Twitter offers its subscribers.

The nodes represent media sources and links represent co-subscription relationships. The node

size is scaled to represent the log of audience share and its colour represents topical categories

(Jisun, Cha, Gummadiz, & Crowcroft, 2011). It is a common experience today to see people

going to social media sites such as Twitter to get updates on current events and read other

peoples’ reactions to events in the news.

To buttress the importance of Twitter to news organizations and news

dissemination in mainstream journalism, Broersman and Graham (2012), observed that news

organizations have begun to harness the potentials of Twitter as a tool for reaching out to

audience. They opine that they use it in four particular ways: to disseminate news, to market

stories, to establish relationships with news consumers, and as a tool for reporting. In recent

years, breaking news like the terrorist attacks in Mumbai (November 2008), the crash of a US

Airways plane in the Hudson River (January 2009) and the revolutions in Moldavia and Middle

East (2009 - 2011) have been distributed through Twitter.

2go

2go is a social networking mobile application that gained popularity in Nigeria over the

past two years. The application is particularly popular among students because it is cheap,

compatible with even the simplest of phones and a non-SMS-based means of chatting with

friends. 2go was conceived by two computer science students- Alan Wolff and Ashley Peter- in

Cape Town back in 2007 and have since grown into a social network for millions. According to

Orji, (2012), “it is a social network of millions of people, where you can meet people, talk to

friends..., keep in touch with families and share files and pictures all over the world”.

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 “Its popularity as a mobile venue for dating and flirting makes it especially popular

amongst students and it continue to expand in Nigeria as it capitalizes on network effects”

(http://www.cp-africa.com). At present, Adeniyi, (2012) citing Balancing Act, a web analyst site;

disclosed that “2go currently has over 20 million registered users, of which 3-3.5 million use it

on a regular basis. Its biggest market is Nigeria with 61 percent of the total which has 12.5

million users, followed by South Africa which has 31 percent with 6.5 million users, followed by

Kenya with 4 percent and others at 4 percent”.

Adeniyi adds that “the users are young: 74 percent are 15-24 year olds in South Africa

and 60 percent in Nigeria. The gender balance is almost equal in South Africa with 49 percent

women, but slightly more male in Nigeria with 64 percent men.” 2go user adoption is growing

rapidly at approximately 50,000 new registrations a day. Its mobile currency, GoCredits, enables

users to buy content, play games and message each other in chat rooms.

However, the application does not require any special network connection on ones phone,

and charges may vary from one mobile operator to the other but the cost remains significantly

less compared to the cost of SMS, face book, twitter or yahoo messenger.

YouTube

YouTube allows its users to upload videos into its data and allow such video to be viewed

by its subscribers directly or by using their Google account. Rodman (2002) describes YouTube,

a technology developed in 2005, as a useable form of streaming technology which enables

videos to be delivered via the web and viewed on a computer screen. He explains that the process

involve ‘buffering’- meaning as the file is being downloaded and saved on a hard drive, it can be

viewed at the same time. “YouTube has dramatically rewritten the possibilities for interactive

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participation in the public sphere, building upon the social networking potential leverage to a

significant extent by the social networking site” (Green 2010:134).

YouTube has made it possible for individuals to upload videos with news worthy and

otherwise content of sorts. This was witnessed in Nigeria on 16th August, 2011 where a video

was uploaded on YouTube which showed 5 alleged students of Abia State University gang-

raping a young lady and captured the act on their mobile phone. The video got out and concerned

individuals spread it on YouTube and what followed was series of public outcry that led to an

investigation ordered by the federal government. The focus here is on user-generated content and

how it shapes the news with almost the same magnitude as mainstream journalism.

Demonstrating the power of YouTube in times of disaster, a video on YouTube entitled

‘Earthquake in Sichuan China’, posted on 12 May 2008 shows footage of the earthquake as

experienced by a college student in his residence. This clip, returned on Google’s page one

results; was used in the BBC’s and the Telegraph’s video footage. The video was viewed over

1.5 million times on YouTube, and shows how information from social sites such as YouTube

can at times influence mainstream news content (Redden & Witschge 2010).

Speaking on the advantages social networking sites offer individuals, Tremayne

(2007:282) opined that individuals who had ideas but no convenient platform to reach a wider

audience now have the opportunity (YouTube) and are taking advantage of it by the millions.

MySpace

This social network site according to Safko (2010) has more than 185 million

members. Owned by Fox Interactive Media (which is part of Rupert Murdoch’s News

Corporation), MySpace is an international interactive web site that allows its members to create a

user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music, and videos.

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 In April 2007, MySpace launched a service called MySpace News that allows

users to link to and display reports from their favorite RSS (Really Simple Syndication) News

feeds. MySpace News also lets members rank each news story by vote. Just as it is with Digg, a

community-based news article popularity web site that combines social bookmarking, blogging,

and syndication, the more votes a story gets the higher up the page it moves.

Protest

According to Daniel L. Schofield (1994), a protest is a public expression of objection,

disapproval or dissent towards an idea or action, typically a political one. Protests can take many

different forms, from individual statements to mass demonstrations. Protesters may organize a

protest as a way of publicly making their opinions heard in an attempt to influence public

opinion or government policy, or they may undertake direct action in an attempt to enact desired

changes themselves. Where protests are part of a systematic and peaceful nonviolent campaign to

achieve a particular objective, and involve the use of pressure as well as persuasion, they go

beyond mere protest and may be better described as cases of civil resistance or nonviolent

resistance.

Various forms of self-expression and protest are sometimes restricted by governmental policy

(such as the requirement of protest permits), economic circumstances, religious orthodoxy, social

structures, or media monopoly. One state reaction to protests is the use of riot police. Observers

have noted an increased militarization of protest policing in many countries, with police

deploying armored vehicles and snipers against protesters. When such restrictions occur, protests

may assume the form of open civil disobedience, more subtle forms of resistance against the

restrictions, or may spill over into other areas such as culture and emigration.

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A protest itself may at times be the subject of a counter-protest. In such cases, counter-protesters

demonstrate their support for the person, policy, action, etc. that is the subject of the original

protest. Protesters and counter-protesters can sometimes violently clash.

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Forms of Protest

According to Daniel L. Schofield (1994), a protest can take many forms. The Dynamics of

Collective Action project and the Global Nonviolent Action Database are two of the leading data

collection efforts attempting to capture protest events. The Dynamics of Collective Action

project considers the repertoire of protest tactics (and their definitions) to include:

 Rally or demonstration: Demonstration, rally, or similar protest, without reference

to marching or walking in a picket line or standing in a vigil. Reference to speeches,

speakers, singing, or preaching, often verified by the presence of PA sound

equipment and sometimes by a platform or stage. Ordinarily will include worship

services, speeches, briefings.

 March: Reference to moving from one location to another; to distinguish from

rotating or walking in a circle with picket signs (which is a picket).

 Vigil: Most vigils have banners, placards, or leaflets so that people passing by,

despite silence from participants, can be informed about the purpose of the vigil.

 Picket: The modal activity is picketing; there may be references to a picket line,

informational picketing, or holding signs; "carrying signs and walking around in a

circle". Holding signs, placards, or banners is not the defining criteria; rather, it is

holding or carrying those items and walking a circular route, a phrase sometimes

surprisingly found in the permit application.

 Civil disobedience: Explicit protest that involves deliberately breaking laws deemed

unjust in order to protest them; crossing barricades, prohibited use of segregated

facilities (such as lunch-counters or restrooms), voter registration drives (to earn non-

eligible people the right to vote), or tying up phone lines.

23
 Ceremony: These celebrate or protest status transitions ranging from birth and death

dates of individuals, organizations or nations; seasons; re-enlistment or

commissioning of military personnel; or to anniversaries of any of the above. These

are sometimes referenced by presenting flowers or wreaths commemorating,

dedicating, or celebrating status transitions or their anniversary; e.g., an

annual merchant marine memorial service, celebrating Chanukah or Easter, or

celebrating the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr.

 Dramaturgical demonstration

 Motorcade: Vehicular procession (electoral campaigns or other issues)

 Information distribution: Tabling/petition gathering, lobbying, letter-writing

campaigns, or teach-ins.

 Symbolic display: e.g., a menorah or creche scene, graffiti, cross burning, sign, or

standing display.

 Attack by collective group (not-one-on-one assault, crime, rape): Motivation for

attack is the "other group's identity" as in gay-bashing or lynching. Can also include

verbal attacks or threats.

 Riot, melee, mob violence: Large-scale (50+), use of violence by instigators against

persons, property, police, or buildings separately or in combination, lasting several

hours.

 Strike, slow down, sick-ins, and employee work protest of any kind: Regular air

strike through failure of negotiations or wildcat air strike. (Make note if a wildcat

strike.)

24
  Boycott: Organized refusal to buy or use a product or service. Examples: rent

strikes, Montgomery bus boycotts

 Press conference: Only if specifically named as such in report, and must be the

predominant activity form. Could involve disclosure of information to "educate the

public" or influence various decision-makers.

 Organization formation announcement or meeting announcement: Meeting or

press conference to announce the formation of a new organization.

 Conflict, attack or clash (no instigator): This includes any boundary conflict in

which no instigator can be identified, i.e. Black/white conflicts, abortion/anti-

abortion conflicts.

 Prayer Walk: A prayer walk is an activity that consists of walking and praying at the

same time. It's done not for the physical benefit but for the spiritual exercise, either

publicly functioning as a demonstration or rally.

 Lawsuit: Legal maneuver by social movement organization or group.

 Peopleless Protest: Simultaneous online and offline protests involving physical

representations of protesters in public spaces that are subsequently assembled online.

Developed in Europe during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Global Nonviolent Action Database uses Gene Sharp's classification of 198 methods of

nonviolent action. There is considerable overlap with the Dynamics of Collective Action

repertoire, although the GNA repertoire includes more specific tactics. Together, the two projects

help define tactics available to protesters and document instances of their use.

25
The Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS)

The Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) was a notorious Nigerian Police Force unit created in

late 1992 to deal with crimes associated with robbery, motor vehicle theft, kidnapping, cattle

rustling, and firearms. It was part of the Force Criminal Investigation and Intelligence

Department (FCIID), headed by Deputy Inspector General of Police Anthony Ogbizi.

SARS was controversial for its links to extrajudicial killings, forced

disappearances, extortion, torture, framing, blackmail, kidnapping, illegal organ trade, armed

robbery, home invasions, rape of men and women, child arrests, the invasion of privacy, and

polluting bodies of water by illegally disposing of human remains. After widespread protests in

Nigeria and worldwide under the motto "End SARS", the unit was disbanded on 11 October

2020. Inspector General of Police M.A. Adamu said that a new unit, the Special Weapons and

Tactics (SWAT), would replace the SARS. He said that SARS personnel would report to police

headquarters for debriefing and examination. Within hours of the announcement, some Nigerians

took to Twitter with the hashtag #EndSWAT, and demonstrations continued amid fears that

police reform would not materialize.

EndSARS Protest in Nigeria

End SARS is a decentralised social movement and series of mass protests against police

brutality in Nigeria. The slogan calls for the disbanding of the Special Anti-Robbery

Squad (SARS), a notorious unit of the Nigerian Police with a long record of abuses. The protests

which takes its name from the slogan started in 2017 as a Twitter campaign using

the hashtag #ENDSARS to demand the disbanding of the unit by the Nigerian government. After

experiencing a revitalisation in October 2020 following more revelations of the abuses of the

unit, mass demonstrations occurred throughout the major cities of Nigeria, accompanied by

26
vociferous outrage on social media platforms. About 28 million tweets bearing the hashtag have

been accumulated on Twitter alone.[7] Solidarity protests and demonstrations by Nigerians

in diaspora and sympathizers occurred in many major cities of the world. The protests is notable

for its patronage by a demographic that is made of entirely young Nigerians. 

Within a few days of renewed protests, on 11 October 2020, the Nigerian Police Force

announced that it was dissolving the unit with immediate effect. The move was widely received

as a triumph of the demonstrations. However, it was noted in many quarters that similar

announcements had been made in recent years to pacify the public without the unit actually

being disbanded, and that the government had merely planned to reassign and review SARS

officers to medical centres rather than disband the unit entirely. Protests have continued

accordingly, and the Nigerian government has maintained a pattern of violent repression

including the killing of demonstrators. There have been international demonstrations in solidarity

with those happening in the country, and the movement has also grown increasingly critical

of Muhammadu Buhari's government response to the protests.

SARS officers have been alleged to profile young Nigerians, mostly males, based on fashion

choices, tattoos and hairstyles. They were also known to mount illegal road blocks, conduct

unwarranted checks and searches, arrest and detain without warrant or trial, rape women, and

extort young male Nigerians for driving exotic vehicles and using laptops and iPhones.
[13]
 Nigerians have shared both stories and video evidence of how officers of SARS engaged

in kidnapping, murder, theft, rape, torture, unlawful arrests, humiliation, unlawful

detention, extrajudicial killings and extortion of Nigerian citizens. A large section of the victims

of the abuses of SARS have been young male Nigerians.

27
Social Media and Protest

Numerous observers contend that social media plays a vital role in spreading basic information,

such as information about the occurrence of rallies in Moldova that were not covered by official

media sources (Faris, 2010; Lotan et al., 2011; Mungiu-Pippidi & Munteanu, 2009). Lysenko

and Desouza (2012) suggested that Twitter was especially helpful in internationalizing the

Moldovan protests and broadcasting information about mass demonstrations. In general, skeptics

point to the lack of concrete behavioral evidence demonstrating that citizens’ online involvement

directly shapes offline events; they conclude that the use of social media is neither a necessary

nor sufficient cause of protest (Aday et al., 2010; Gladwell, 2010; Lynch, 2011). The same

debate arose with respect to the antecedents of civil unrest following the 2009 Iranian elections.

Howard (2010) argued that “the Iranian insurgency was very much shaped by several digital

communication tools, which allowed social movements within the country to organize protests

and exchange information and made it possible for those groups to maintain contact with the rest

of the world” (p.11).4 Indeed, the U.S. State Department apparently regarded Twitter as

sufficiently important in promoting regime opposition that it asked the company to postpone

scheduled maintenance tasks to avoid disruption of service.5 At the same time, Aday et al.

(2010) concluded that “Twitter’s impact on the protests was almost certainly extremely modest”

(p. 18) and that traditional media sources were equally important in conveying information about

the protests in Iran. Complicating matters further, it appears that the Iranian regime used the

same social network platforms to identify opposition activists and mobilize regime supporters

(Aday et al., 2010). This raises the possibility that the net effect of social media is to hinder

political participation by making it easier for governments to disrupt oppositional activities. Such

disruption can range from monitoring the same Twitter feeds that opposition members use to

28
communicate with one another,6 to limiting Internet access through the use of technical tools

such as filtering and blocking keywords (e.g., Qiang 2011; Zitrain 2008), to fairly sophisticated

ways of exerting control, such as denial-of-service attacks, planting provocateurs among

opposition online communities, and making use of new technologies that will allow governments

to identify protestors based on voices and facial images from protest recordings that are uploaded

to social media sites (Morozov, 2011).

It has been claimed repeatedly—often in the absence of solid data—that Twitter, Facebook, and

other social media resources are profoundly shaping both disruptive and nondisruptive forms of

civil participation (e.g., Cha, Haddadi, Benevento, & Gummadi, 2010; Jungherr, Jurgens, &

Schoen, 2011; Lynch, 2011; Shirky, 2011). Yet as a research community we are still learning

just how it is that the use of social media systematically affects civil and political participation in

areas such as voting or demonstrating for or against a given cause or regime and government

parastatals. Isolating direct and specific causes and consequences of social media use remains

tremendously challenging, and acute theoretical and methodological problems have yet to be

solved (Aday et al., 2010; Gladwell, 2010). Even the most trenchant empirical contributions have

been saddled thus far with limitations, such as the unrealistic assumption that “users joined the

movement the moment they started sending Tweets about it” (Gonzalez-Bailon, Borge-

Holthoefer, Rivero, & Moreno, 2011, p. 2). Nevertheless, the use of social media has been linked

to the spread of civil protest in many cities around the world, including Moscow, Kiev, Istanbul,

Ankara, Cairo, Tripoli, Athens, Madrid, New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and Ferguson,

Missouri and Nigeria. Obviously, civil and political protest itself is far from new, but the fact

that it is possible to access real-time accounts of protest behavior documented and archived

through microblogging (e.g., Twitter) and social media (e.g., Facebook) websites is a novel

29
phenomenon. Indeed, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a protest that does not have its

own distinctive hashtag on Twitter (e.g., #OWS 5 Occupy Wall Street; #Jan25 5 protests in

Egypt; #direngeziparkı 5 protests in Turkey; and #Euromaidan 5 protests in Ukraine and

#EndSARS in Nigeria), and it is easy to connect these hashtags to message content, user

metadata, and social networks.1 User metadata associated with these accounts allows researchers

to access critical information about location, time, position in and structure of the user’s social

network, all of which creates unparalleled opportunities for social scientific research. For

movement organizers, social media provides an efficient vehicle for the rapid transmission of

information about planned events and political developments, thereby facilitating the

organization of protest activity. Because of this, Shirky (2011) concluded that: “As the

communications landscape gets denser, more complex, and more participatory, the networked

population is gaining greater access to information, more opportunities to engage in public

speech, and an enhanced ability to undertake collective action” (p. 1; see also Diamond &

Plattner, 2012). On the other hand, the use of social media by would-be dissidents provides

extraordinary opportunities for governmental authorities to detect and suppress protest activity.

For example, the Chinese government has become a worldwide leader in Internet censorship,

using technology to identify and quash attempts to organize public assemblies and

demonstrations—while simultaneously allowing criticism of the government, apparently so that

they can monitor public opinion (King, Pan, & Roberts, 2013). A technological “cat-and-mouse”

game between dissidents and defenders of existing regimes is underway (MacKinnon, 2012;

Morozov, 2011; Shirky, 2011), and it is hard to imagine that it will ever disappear. For political

psychologists and other behavioral scientists, the rise to ubiquity of social media— and the

conglomeration of websites and online services loosely referred to as “Web 2.0” (Kaplan &

30
Haenlein, 2010)—presents remarkable empirical opportunities as well as theoretical and

methodological challenges (Alberici & Milesi, 2012; Gonzalez-Bailon et al., 2011; Hooghe,

Vissers, Stolle, & Maheo, 2010; McGarty, Thomas, Lala, Smith, & Bliuc, 2013; Postmes &

Brunsting, 2002). The sudden emergence of social media upends models of collective action that

have relied on traditional assumptions about the pace and modes of human communication; at

the same time, massive data archives from networking sites present researchers with resources to

address important long-standing questions. Social and behavioral scientists throughout the

second half of the twentieth century relied on surveys of hundreds or perhaps thousands of

respondents; only recently have they been able to capitalize on web-based methods to compile

datasets involving tens of thousands of respondents (Berinsky, Huber, & Lenz, 2012; Gosling,

Vazire, Srvistava, & John, 2004; Nosek, Banaji, & Greenwald, 2002). Social media, by

comparison, promises to equip researchers with data sets involving tens of millions of

informants, raising enormous scientific—as well as ethical—challenges (Dhar, 2013; King,

2011). Before behavioral scientists can take advantage of these extraordinary opportunities,

however, it is necessary to develop an integrative understanding of the effectiveness of both

informational and motivational appeals in the context of new technological vehicles for

communication; the role of ideology, group identity, emotion, and other social psychological

factors in facilitating or inhibiting participation in collective action; and the spread of influence

through friendship and other complex social networks.

2.2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Psychological and attitudinal Theory

Traditional grievance or relative deprivation models of political activism, first proposed in the

late 1960s and further developed in the 1970s, focused on psychological factors that lead people

31
to engage in contentious politics (Block / Haan / Smith 1968; Braungart 1971; Fendrich / Krauss

1978; Gurr 1970; Lewis / Kraut 1972; Thomas 1971). As Muller and Jukam (1983) have written:

“People who take part in acts of civil disobedience or political violence are discontented about

something.” The underlying psychological mechanism at work is that unfulfilled material

expectations cause anger, frustration and resentment which manifest themselves in an individual

propensity to protest. The theory of relative deprivation also bears an analogy to modernization

theory: According to Huntington (1968), political instability is unleashed by rapid social change,

unfulfilled economic expectations, and the resulting political mobilization of previously

disaffected groups of citizens. While the relative deprivation approach emphasized the primacy

of material grievances, more recent studies have shifted the focus of attention towards emotional

motives that relate to beliefs about society (Aminzade 2001; Goodwin / Jasper / Polletta 2001;

Jasper / Poulsen 1995; Jasper 1998; Oliver / Johnston 2000). People may be motivated to engage

in protest out of a sense of moral indignation provoked by an emotional response to an

aggrieving situation. Reactive emotions such as anger, moral outrage, or confusion in the face of

injustice can trigger the decision to participate in protest events (van Laer 2011). Strong reactive

emotions may even incline these citizens to participate in protests that do not have pre-existing

affective ties to a protest movement or personal links to other protesters (Jasper / Poulsen 1995;

van Laer 2011). While material and moral grievances may provide an abundance of motives

under authoritarian rule, the ability of civil society to funnel these motives into collective action

is usually thwarted by the fact that the public sphere is sealed: the national narrative is controlled

by a government which usually resorts to a mix of censorship, intimidation and persecution to

suppress information on economic malperformance, human rights violations, corruption or any

other issue which may negatively reflect on itself. By providing a space for free speech, on the

32
other hand, the Internet poses an existential threat to the ability of authoritarian governments to

control this national narrative (Kuebler 2011). Web-based communication technologies makes it

possible to expose non-governmental narratives to a wide public. Once such information is

leaked, it may unleash a dual effect: On the individual level it can act as a cognitive maximizer

that pushes people into protest action, especially if it meets with and reinforces personal

experiences of economic deprivation or abusive treatment at the hands of government agents. At

the macro-level of collective outcomes, content that evokes negative emotions has a high

potential to “go viral”. Berger and Milkman (2010) have shown that anger and anxiety as

emotional states of heightened physiological arousal are key forces in driving social transmission

and diffusion. In the context of an authoritarian state, this implies that information which is

prone to produce negative emotions has a high potential to quickly diffuse on the Net and

virtually spiral out of governmental control. Following this line of theoretical reasoning, it can be

hypothesized that the Internet provided an element of emotional mobilization in the Nigeria

EndSARS protest and uprising by helping to break the grip of SARS censorship and by making

information on corruption in the system and its human rights violations available to a large

segment of the population.

2.3 EMPIRICAL REVIEW

D.I.E (2012) conducted a research on the Role of Social Media in Mobilizing Political Protest in

the Tunisian Revolution. The findings stated that One of the hallmarks of the Tunisian uprising

that ousted President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011 was its broad base of support. To

the surprise of many Middle East experts who had previously regarded co-opted and quiescent

middle classes as the bedrock of stability for authoritarian regimes in the region, the Tunisian

revolution rode on the back of a broad coalition of social forces that united an alienated

33
intellectual elite with the rural poor and urban middle classes in opposition to the regime. It is a

widely shared assumption that this joining of disparate forces would not have been possible

without modern communication technologies and social media. But it is less clear exactly how

such social media interacted with other contextual factors to bring about a national protest

movement of sufficient proportions to topple an extremely entrenched authoritarian regime.

Drawing on evidence from the popular protests in Tunisia between December 2010 and January

2011, expert interviews with Tunisian bloggers, and a web survey conducted among Tunisian

Facebook users, this paper argues that social media (1) allowed a “digital elite” to form personal

networks and circumvent the national media blackout by brokering information for outside

mainstream media; (2) helped to overcome the “free rider” problem of collective action by

reporting the magnitude of protest events; and (3) facilitated the formation of a national

collective identity which was supportive of protest action and transcended geographical and

socio-economic disparities by providing a shared, mobilizing element of emotional grievance.

Sangwon Lee (2018) conducted a research on role of social media and mechanisms through

which it can mobilize citizens to participate in protests. Focusing specifically on Facebook as a

social media platform, this study uses survey data collected in South Korea during the 2016

candlelight vigils (N = 922). Findings suggest that the frequency of Facebook use was strongly

and positively associated with protest activity. Yet, further path analysis reveals no direct effect

of Facebook use on protest participation. Instead, Facebook use facilitated purposeful news

consumption and political expression on the site, which in turn facilitated protest participation.

Despite the prevalence of incidental exposure to news on Facebook, incidental exposure did not

breed further political action, such as expressing political opinions on Facebook.

34
John T Jost et al (2018) in their studies on how Social Media Facilitates Political Protest:

Information, Motivation, and Social Networks: Social Media and Political Protest stated that the

promising situation in which to explore the effectiveness of social media with respect to the

organization of mass political participation came from the Turkish protest movement that began

in June of 2013 (see Tucker et al., 2016, for an extended discussion). Spurred by a perceived lack

of media coverage by traditional Turkish media, protestors turned to Twitter and Facebook in

droves to spread and receive information about the events unfolding in Istanbul. The result was a

remarkable demonstration of information diffusion using online social networks. The listed five

of the most popular Facebook pages covering protests that began in Gezi Park. During the period

we investigated, four of these pages received approximately 250–725 “likes” per day. The most

popular Facebook page, which was in Turkish, was “liked” 643,951 times over a threemonth

period; the figure represents an average of over 7,000 “likes” per day. Furthermore, the findings

found clear evidence that Twitter was used for the sort of logistical purposes that have been

claimed by enthusiasts of online activism (Tucker et al., 2016). In the first month of the protest

alone, over 30 million tweets citing the most salient hashtags were transmitted; most of these

were sent in Turkish from inside the country. These figures were significantly higher than those

observed only a few years earlier, as in the case of the Egyptian revolution of 2011, where less

than 30% of the tweets originated in Egypt (Starbird & Palen, 2012). Half a million of the

Turkish tweets were geo-located, so this corpus of tweets provides a valuable source of

objectively verifiable information about how protest behavior spreads online and offline. The

study displayed the geographic distribution of a large sample of tweets citing one or more of the

major protest hashtags. Most of the messages were sent directly from Taksim Square, and as

many as 30,000 different users sent at least one tweet from the area, confirming that social media

35
usage was indeed widespread during the protest period. We selected a random sample of 800

tweets from the Turkish protests and had them translated into English. Some of the tweets were

clearly intended as messages of encouragement and support, and others passed along

international news coverage of the events. Many tweets provided specific informational updates,

such as instructing demonstrators to converge on particular locations, warning them when the

police were approaching those locations, and providing information on how to obtain medical

assistance for injuries. Still other messages solicited advice about how to counteract the effects

of tear gas or to recruit donors of specific blood types in order to treat those who were wounded

in protest (see Tucker et al., 2016). With respect to the Ukrainian protests of 2014, our analysis

of the role of social media yielded four major conclusions (Tucker et al., 2014). First, social

media platforms—especially Facebook— clearly helped to facilitate the organization of

Euromaidan protests. According to a survey of protestors, 5% of respondents learned about the

protest from a student group on Facebook, and 40% indicated that they were encouraged to

participate by friends or family members on Facebook (Onuch, 2014). They provide several

examples in the study in the ways in which social media was used to coordinate activity and

recruit new participants once the protests were underway. The Euromaidan Facebook page

appeared on November 21, 2013, at the very beginning of the protests. Within two weeks this

page had received more than 125,000 “likes.” The page was used simply to spread news and

information about the ongoing protests. Another page, which was “liked” more than 40,000

times over the next year or so, spread news and information in English. To address more specific

needs, new pages were created to coordinate transportation, medical services, and legal support.

It seems clear that protest organizers used social media platforms to provide key logistical

support for participants. One Facebook page, which appeared in early December, was called

36
“helpgettomaidan,” and it facilitated the organization of carpools to the Maidan from other cities

and other parts of Kiev. Users shared the number of passengers they could transport, the time and

location of departures, and telephone numbers. This enabled would-be protestors from all over

Ukraine to coordinate travel and other details. Another page (“Maidan Medics”) was created to

coordinate activity among medical practitioners. Similar pages included “EuromaidanSOS” and

“Maidanhelp,” which offered support to victims of violence.

A third conclusion from the analysis was that social media usage closely tracked important

political developments throughout the crisis. The findings stated that, spikes in online activity

correspond very closely to periods of important offline activity, including the initial surge of

protests that began in late November; clashes that erupted after anti protest laws were passed on

January 16, 2014; and another surge of protest activity following police violence that killed 20

protestors on February 18, 2014. Twitter usage in Ukraine started at a low level, but the number

of new accounts increased significantly with each successive wave of protest activity. This

pattern suggests that many Ukrainians may have joined Twitter in order to follow Euromaidan

events. There is an especially dramatic increase in the use of Twitter that coincides precisely

with the outbreak of police violence on February 18, 2014. Between July 2013 and July 2014,

the number of Twitter users in Ukraine more than doubled, and the most popular hashtag during

this period was related to the protests. A fourth observation was that the social networks of

Ukrainian and Russian users of social media overlapped considerably. That is, the study

observed that many people who listed Ukrainian (UK) as their preferred language when they

registered their Twitter accounts also tweeted in Russian, and many people who listed Russian

(RU) as their preferred language also tweeted in Ukrainian. Even in Russian language networks,

the vast majority of tweets came from people who appeared to be proUkrainian. We also

37
observed that Ukrainian and Russian language users often tweeted in English, either to reach

international media outlets or members of the diaspora living outside of Ukraine. The number of

tweets in all three languages (Ukrainian, Russian, and English) increased dramatically following

the clash with police forces on February 18, 2014, suggesting that interested parties were

processing the events together in real time rather than simply spreading foreign news reports

( Tucker et al., 2014).

38
 CHAPTER THREE

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.1 RESEARCH DESIGN

Research designs are perceived to be an overall strategy adopted by the researcher whereby

different components of the study are integrated in a logical manner to effectively address a

research problem. In this study, the researcher employed the survey research design. This is due

to the nature of the study whereby the opinion and views of people are sampled.

3.2 POPULATION OF THE STUDY

According to Udoyen (2019), a study population is a group of elements or individuals as the case

may be, who share similar characteristics. These similar features can include location, gender,

age, sex or specific interest. The emphasis on study population is that it constitute of individuals

or elements that are homogeneous in description.

This study was carried out to examine the role of social media in the police reformation in

Nigeria using the 2020 EndSARS protest as a case study. The residents of Lagos State form the

population of the study.

3.3 SAMPLE SIZE DETERMINATION

A study sample is simply a systematic selected part of a population that infers its result on the

population. In essence, it is that part of a whole that represents the whole and its members share

characteristics in like similitude (Udoyen, 2019). In this study, the researcher adopted the simple

random sampling (srs.) method to determine the sample size.

39
3.4 SAMPLE SIZE SELECTION TECHNIQUE AND PROCEDURE

The Taro Yamane (1967:886) provides a simplified formula to calculate sample sizes.

Assumption

95% confidence level

P = .5

n= 2,200/1+2,200 (0.05)2

n= 2,200/1+2,200 (0.0025)

n= 2,200/1+5.5

n=338

Therefore, for this study, the sample size is 338

3.5 SOURCES OF DATA COLLECTION

The research instrument used in this study is the questionnaire. A 10 minutes survey containing

19 questions were administered to the enrolled participants. The questionnaire was divided into

two sections, the first section enquired about the responses demographic or personal data while

the second sections were in line with the study objectives, aimed at providing answers to the

research questions.

40
3.6 METHOD OF DATA ANALYSIS

The responses were analysed using the frequency tables, which provided answers to the research

questions.

3.7 VALIDITY AND RELIABILITY OF THE STUDY

The reliability and validity of the research instrument was determined. The Pearson Correlation

Coefficient was used to determine the reliability of the instrument. A co-efficient value of 0.68

indicated that the research instrument was relatively reliable. According to (Taber, 2017) the

range of a reasonable reliability is between 0.67 and 0.87.

41
 CHAPTER FOUR

DATA PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS

4.1 DATA PRESENTATION

The table below shows the summary of the survey. A sample of 388 was calculated for this

study. A total of 258 responses were received, while a total of 230 were validated. This was due

to irregular, incomplete and inappropriate responses to some questionnaire. For this study a total

of 230 was validated for the analysis.

Table 4.1: sample Survey

Questionnaire Frequency Percentage

Sample size 388 100
Received 258 66.5
Validated 230 59.2

Table 4.2: Demographic data of respondents

Demographic information Frequency percent

Gender
101 44%
Male
Female 129 56%
Religion
Christian 200 77%
Muslim 70 23%
Age
18-22 79 34%
23-30 112 48%
30+ 39 17%
Education
Diploma 30 15%
B.Sc 200 60%
Masters 30 15%
Ph.D 10 10%

42
Source: Field Survey, 2020

4.2 ANSWERING RESEARCH QUESTIONS

Question 1: Do you think social media contributed to the 2020 EndSARS protest in Nigeria?

Table 4.2: Respondent on do you think social media contributed to the 2020 EndSARS protest

in Nigeria.

Options Frequency Percentage

Yes 230 100
No 0 0
Undecided
Total 230 100
Field Survey, 2020

From the responses obtained as expressed in the table 4.2 above, All the respondents constituting

100% of the population said uses the school library. There was no record of no.

Question 2: How do you think social media contributed to the 2020 EndSARS protest in

Nigeria?

Table 4.3: Respondent on how do you think social media contributed to the 2020 EndSARS

protest in Nigeria.

Options Yes No Total %

It helped to spread the news and videos of SARS 270 100%

brutality on people all over the internet

It helped to create a global community 270 100%
It helped to gather the views of people on SARS 270 100%

brutality
It helped to broadcast on the people’s decision to 270 100%

carryout the protest

It helped to bring to the notice of the public the 270 100%

international communities’ views on the SARs

43
 brutality in Nigeria.
Field Survey, 2020

From the responses obtained as expressed in the table 4.3 above all the respondents constituting

100% said yes to all the options provided.

Question 3: What significant role do you think social media played in the reformation of police

in Nigeria?

Table 4.4: Respondent on significant role do you think social media played in the reformation

of police in Nigeria.

Options Yes No Total %

It helped to create a community of people with 270 100%

similar goal to fight against SARS brutality

It brought to about legal practitioners that rose to 270 100%

support protesters
It brought about the assistance from individuals 270 100%

financially to support protesters

It led to the scaping of SARS and introduction of 270 100%

SWAT
It brought about the reformation of and 270 100%

rehabilitation of police force

Field Survey, 2020

From the responses obtained as expressed in the table 4.4 above all the respondents constituting

100% said yes to all the options provided.

44
 CHAPTER FIVE

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION

5.1 CONCLUSION

In this study, our focus was to examine the role of social media on the police reformation in

Nigeria using the 2020 EndSARS protest as a case study. The study specifically was aimed at

ascertaining if social media significantly contributed to the reformation of police in Nigeria.

The study adopted the survey research design and randomly enrolled participants in the study. A

total of 270 responses were validated from the enrolled participants where all respondent are

residents of Lagos State.

The findings revealed that social media contributed to the 2020 EndSARS protest in Nigeria. The

findings also revealed that social media played a significant role in the reformation of police in

Nigeria.

5.2 RECOMMENDATION

Based on the responses obtained, the researcher proffers the following recommendations:

 The federal government of Nigeria should look into the reasons behind the protest that

caused chaos and uproar in all the 36 states in Nigeria and enact laws and structures that

bring to an end the brutality of SARS in Nigeria.

 The government of Nigeria should endeavor to orientate the SWAT properly so that they

will not be like pouring new wine in an old wine skin. That is the SWAT being another

version of SARS.

45
 The federal of Nigeria should carry out a thorough check on all members of the SWAT

force and their academic qualifications to ascertain their eligibility for the work.

46
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58
 APPENDIX

QUESTIONNAIRE

PLEASE TICK [√] YOUR MOST PREFERRED CHOICE (s) ON A QUESTION

SECTION A

PERSONAL INFORMATION

Gender

Male [ ] Female [ ]

Age

18-25 [ ]

20-30 [ ]

31-40 [ ]

41 and above [ ]

Educational level

WAEC[ ]

BSC/HND [ ]

MSC/PGDE [ ]

PHD [ ]

Others……………………………………………….. (please indicate)

Marital Status

Single [ ]

Married [ ]

Separated [ ]

Widowed [ ]

59
Section B

Options Frequency
Yes
No
Undecided
How do you think social media contributed to the 2020 EndSARS protest in Nigeria?

Options Yes No
It helped to spread the news and videos of SARS

brutality on people all over the internet

It helped to create a global community
It helped to gather the views of people on SARS

brutality
It helped to broadcast on the people’s decision to

carryout the protest

It helped to bring to the notice of the public the

international communities’ views on the SARs

brutality in Nigeria.

What significant role do you think social media played in the reformation of police in Nigeria?

60
Options Yes No
It helped to create a community of people with

similar goal to fight against SARS brutality

It brought to about legal practitioners that rose to

support protesters
It brought about the assistance from individuals

financially to support protesters

It led to the scaping of SARS and introduction of

SWAT
It brought about the reformation of and

rehabilitation of police force

61