98% of Nigerian Senate President’s Language Tones Determine How Newspapers Market Him Ahead of 2019 General Election

From candidates to party members, and from political machineries to the electorate, villages, towns and cities in Nigeria have been awash with various political messages since November, 2018 ahead of the 2019 general elections. As one of the key stakeholders in the country’s electoral process and democratic consolidation, mass media are expected to play their informative and watchdog roles, checking the excesses of the politicians, electoral umpire, security agencies and citizens.

In this special analysis, Infoprations examines how Nigerian newspapers headlined a political statement credited to the Senator Abubakar Bukola Saraki, the Senate President during the inauguration of his party’s Campaign Council.

The statement reads: “Do not be afraid. I have heard all the talks of the opposition about using federal might but we have seen it all. We saw it in 2003, we saw it in 2015 or don’t you know that they used federal might in 2015?  In 2015, with federal might, we defeated them.  It was you people that God used then and in 2019, with those who have come to join us, we will defeat them again.

This statement was analysed considering the embedded language tones. Analysis shows that Senator Saraki was cautious and logical than being happy while delivering his message at the inauguration. This was analysed further with the specific emotions (Score 0-100) The Herald, Daily Trust, The Punch and Vanguard newspapers incorporated in their headline formats.

Two of the newspapers used the first sentence of the statement “Don’t be afraid” while the four newspapers used two words (“federal might”) from the sentence that follows in addition to “Don’t be afraid” in their headlines. The modelling of the language tones with the emotions embedded in the headlines shows that the language tone s determine the emotional level in the headlines by 98%. This indicates that Senate President’s language tones helped the newspapers in writing headlines that appeal to the readers and would help him in getting a favourable response from Kwarans during the 2019 general elections.

By employing intellectual emotion category (used mostly), Nigerian newspapers presented Senator Saraki to the politically conscious Kwarans who appreciate what he has done in the state and know his possible future roles in advancing the state.