spread the word and create solidarity around the issue of free and fair elections in Nigeria
Configure the blog to accept not just direct web submissions but also submissions via email
(including photos) and SMS
Tag postings with meaningful names of Nigerian States, Cities as well as topics (e.g. Rivers
State, Port Harcourt and police). If the blog is then successful, a tag cloud on the site might
become a powerful way to visualize what is happening
6. CONCLUSION
This paper has argued that blogging which is a recent phenomenon in the Nigerian democracy is a type of work. As
social workers, bloggers employ texts to convey sentiments, transmit ideas, criticize anti-social practices, confront anti-
people policies, and proffer plausible people-oriented solutions to fundamental problems in society. We have shown that
linguistic items encode a variety of actions. Whereas 'elect(ion)' enhances civic fulfilment, 'select(ion)' evokes apathy in
the minds of electorates. Moreover, the use of 'elect(ion)' indicates citizen participation whereas 'select(ion)' is
indicative of civic deprivation. These two lexical cognates express the mood and attitudes of the electorates towards the
Nigerian 2007 General Elections. We predict that the weblog will play more significant roles in future General Elections
in Nigeria.
References
Adamic, L.A., and N. Glance (2005), The Political Blogosphere and the 2004 U.S. Election: Divided They Blog, 2
nd
Annual Weblogging Workshop,
WWW 2005, May 10, Chiba, Japan.
Ajao, D. (2007). “Nigeria: Blogging the Historic Election (Part 1), ” Global Voices. April 18
http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/2007/04/18/nigeria-blogging-the-historic-election-part-1/
Ajao, D. (2007). “Nigeria: Blogging the Historic Election (Part 2),” Oluniyi David Ajao. May 4
http://www.davidajao.com/blog/2007/05/04/nigeria-blogging-the-historic-election-part-2/
Akinsanmi, T. (2006). “Here They Come Again: Deciding our Future through the 2007 Elections,”
Native of Nigeria, Citizen of the World. June 9
http://pourjamais.blogspot.com/2006/06/here-they-come-again-deciding-our.html
Cross, R (2005). Blogging for Votes: An Examination of the Interaction Between Weblogs and the Electoral Process. Paper presented at the annual
meeting of the American Sociological Association, Marriott Hotel, Loews Philadelphia Hotel, Philadelphia, PA.
http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p34174_index.html
de Moor, A. and Efimova, L. (2004). An Argumentation Analysis of Weblog Conversations. Proc. of the 9th
International Working Conference on
the Language-Action Perspective on Communication Modelling (LAP 2004).
Drezner, D. and Farell, H. (2004). The Power and Politics of Blogs. Paper Presented at the American Political Science Association, July.
www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~farrell/blogpaperfinal.pdf
Efimova, L. and Fiedler, S. (2004). Learning Webs: Learning in Weblog Networks. Submitted to Web-based communities 2004, Lisbon, Portugal.
https://doc.telin.nl/dscgi/ds.py/Get/File-35344
Eigen, T. (2007) “Blueprint for a Nigerian Civil Society Election Blog.” March 12
http://www.saidia.org/2007/03/15/blueprint-for-a-nigerian-civil-society-election-blog/
19 / 20