THE INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA FRAMING ON AUDIENCE PERCEPTION OF ENDSARS AGENDA PROTEST

In 2017, the #ENDSARS hashtag began trending across social media platforms, calling for a scrap of a police unit Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). Nigerians complained about the activities of SARS that include extortion, extra-judicial killing, and harassment, among others. The Nigerian government and Police authorities promised to overhaul the SARS activities despite calls to scrap the police unit. On October 3rd 2020, a video went viral across social media platforms how police officers suspected SARS officers shot a young man and took his Lexus car away. Social media influencers organized the protest and like wildfire, it spread across the country. Based on this, the research is structured to ascertain respondents’ level of exposure to social media framing on EndSARS protest, to determine if social media framing on EndSARS protest motivated the youths, to find out if social media framing contributed to protests across the country. No doubt, the internet and social media have changed the narrative of organizing protests across the globe and Nigeria in particular. Anchored on three theories namely, framing theory, social category theory, and technology determinism theory. Survey research method was adopted for the study and copies of the questionnaire were distributed online with help of Google forms. Findings revealed that respondents were exposed to social media framing on EndSARS agenda and social media framing contributed to country’s protest across the country. The study recommends, among others, that government should always investigate reports about its agencies and take proper action to forestall any protest in the future.