Ideological representation of #EndSARS protesters by government (agencies) in selected Nigerian newspaper reports

Abstract

The 8^th of October 2020 cannot be forgotten in a hurry in the history of Nigeria. It marked the beginning of the #EndSARS protest that rocked the whole country. Nigerian youths in their thousands trooped out to speak against police brutality with reference to the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) of the Nigeria Police. the protest became the most important topic in the media at that time, and has since generated scholarly reactions across different disciplines. Existing studies on the #EndSARS protest have engaged rapport management, pragmatic and discursive features in #EndSARS-related discourse. However, adequate attention has not been given to the discourse strategies and the ideological representation of the protesters by the government and its agencies. thus, this study adopts Van Leeuwen's representation of social actors, complemented with aspects of Halliday's systemic functional linguistics (SFL). Data were drawn from four widely read Nigerian newspapers, namely The Guardian, the Punch, the Nation and the Sun. the period of covered was between 2020 and 2021. Protesters are represented as 'terrorists', 'economic saboteurs' and 'purveyors of fake news'. these representational strategies were hinged on Leeuwen's representational strategies as activation, association, dissociation and exclusion.