A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF TWITTER NARRATIVES ON PETER OBI’S CAMPAIGN DURING NIGERIA’S 2023 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

ABSTRACT This study conducts a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of Twitter narratives surrounding Peter Obi's presidential campaign during Nigeria's 2023 elections with the following specific objectives: to examine how Twitter narratives shaped public perception of Peter Obi's campaign; to analyze the rhetorical and discursive strategies employed in these discussions; and to assess the influence of these narratives on political engagement and voter mobilization. The study employed a qualitative research design and stratified purposive sampling technique to select a corpus of 50 tweets and 250 associated comments from the period of January 2022 to March 2023. The data were analyzed using Fairclough's three-dimensional CDA framework. The findings reveal that supportive narratives strategically framed Peter Obi as an empathetic, competent, and corrupt-free "people's champion," using lexical collocations like "integrity" and "empathy," anaphora, and populist slogans such as "A new Nigeria" to foster collective identity and hope. In contrast, oppositional narratives deployed negative other-presentation, employing pejorative metaphors like "vulture" and tropes of an "Igbo agenda" to delegitimize his candidacy and invoke ethno-religious fears. The study recommends that political candidates should adopt inclusive, competence-based social media strategies to counter divisive framing; civil society and policymakers should invest in digital literacy programs and regulatory frameworks to combat disinformation; and campaigns should integrate multimodal content and networked activism to enhance mobilization and sustain engagement beyond election cycles.