Social Media and Connective Mourning

Abstract

This chapter explores how Nigerians are using social media platforms such as Twitter to memorialise protesters who were killed during the 2020 #EndSARS protests in Nigeria. Data for this chapter is from tweets (N=67,678) from Twitter users scraped from the hashtags “#EndSARSMemorial2” and “LekkiMassacre.” Results show that the most frequently tweeted words were “rest in peace,” “heroes,” “who gave the order,” and “#EndSARSMemorial2.” Findings also demonstrate that protesters used social media platforms to display their anger, anguish, imprecating the authorities, and to rouse solidarity contagion which ignited mourning and memorial march for the fallen activists in Nigeria. The chapter shows that beyond the realm of mourning based on relatedness, there is an emerging world of connective mourning where mourners mourn those that they do not have ties to or are unrelated to but memorialised due to shared belief and connective repertoire.