FRAMING THE QUEERS AND THE LGBT RIGHT MOVEMENT IN AFRICA: A STUDY OF NIGERIAN BLOGGERS AND WEB JOURNALISTS

This paper presents Nigerian web journalists and bloggers’ framing of homosexuals and the Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transgender (LGBT) right movement. It is based on a content analysis of 176 online articles posted by Nigerian bloggers and web journalists working with some Nigerian elite newspapers and has two principal objectives namely (i) to examine major angles explored by the citizen journalists and (ii) x-ray the tone of their articles. The paper argues that though not dominant, pro-gay sentiments are perceptible in a considerable number of online articles on homosexuality, written by Nigerian citizen journalists. These pro-gay sentiments are mostly anchored on human right arguments, the theory of modernity and biblical injunctions. However, anti-gay sentiments remain dominant among Nigerian bloggers and web journalists. Such anti-gay sentiments are mostly anchored on the theories of cultural purism and nationalism. Pro-gay journalists and bloggers seem to intrinsically aid the socio-political resistance against the myth of the Whiteman’s superiority and neo-colonialism. The dominance of the anti-gay tone in the articles’ contents tends to evidence the fact that though homosexuality may arguably not be an import from America and Europe, the phenomenon still has a long way to go for it to totally be accommodated in the Nigerian social system. Bloggers and web journalists dominantly construe the LGBT right movement as a western concept. They depict the pressure exerted by the west on African nations to legalize homosexuality as an imperialist or neo-colonialist strategy. In tandem with this, endogenous activism and advocacy for LGBT right is more associated with manifestations of westernization; that is, the expressions of westernized and off-rooted Nigerians. According to these anti-gay schools of thought, both the endogenous and exogenous efforts in favour of LGBT right should be combated with utmost rigor if cultural sanity and political integrity is to be secured.