A Study of Online Hate Speeches: Legitimation Processes by Nigerian Political Actors

Abstract

Online social media offers platforms for political gladiators to engage in hate speeches as a means to perpetual power contestation. This in turn demands total restructuring of political institutions, through different legitimation strategies. The current study highlights hate speeches’ legitimation process and its entrenchment as a contemporary societal cultural object. The paper extends Vaara’s et al (2006) and Johnson’s (2006) application of the theory of legitimacy in products marketing to the evaluation of political hate speeches’ legitimation process. Data comprising of twenty-five (25) excerpts on hate speeches from Politically Exposed Persons across Nigeria were purposively selected from online media sources. The study revealed that any particular hate speech of political gladiators is a cultural product marketed by the elites through the legitimisation processes of innovation, local validation, diffusion and generalalidation with its negative influence on Nigeria’s political institutionalisation processes.

Key Terms: Evaluation, Discourse, Hate Speeches, Ideology, Context