Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Ideology in Selected Media Releases on Boko Haram (2012-2019)

Abstract

This study identified ideologies and interpreted their linguistic and visual representations in the media releases of Boko Haram. It also examined the communicative modalities in the media releases and related them to ideology, power, and dominance in the discourse. The data for the study were drawn from purposively selected 10 video recordings of media releases of Boko Haram.The media release video clips were downloaded from the YouTube through Internet ethnography. The speeches in the selected video clips were later transcribed into written texts, while four screenshots of relevant visuals were taken from the video clips. The verbal mode was subjected to the analytical tools of Halliday‘s Systemic Functional Grammar, and the visual mode was analysed using the principles of Kress and van Leeuwen‘s Visual Grammar. The results showed that Boko Haram espoused ideologies of state religion, divine power, Salafi-Jihadism, and anti-Westernisation using verbal and visual resources. The study further discovered that the ideological issues in the media releases were conveyed through transitivity patterns (mainly material, verbal, behavioural, mental and relational processes), and information structure, while the visual meanings conveyed by means of body posture, colour, dressing, images and symbols. Lastly, the results showed that the ideological issues espoused in the discourse were reflective of Nigeria‘s socio-political contexts. The study concluded that the media releases of Boko Haram exemplify the expressions of power and dominance through verbal and visual semiotic referents.