Peace Journalism and teh New Political Twittersphere in Multipolar Society

The public sphere currently wears a new look as the Internet and social media platforms steadily take the place of coffeehouses as a constituent part of Habermas’s initial theorem of the public sphere. As well, the boundary of peace journalism is simultaneously exceeding the skewed notions earlier ascribed to it as an approach unilaterally applicable to the reporting of war-related issues and events. This study operationalizes the increasing relevance of social media platforms and particularly Twitter as the emerging public sphere for political engagements, information sharing and democratic dissent. Notwithstanding such democracy-enhancing possibilities, the new public sphere holds potential for threatening democratic peace. Relying on Twitter-sourced data, the study examines dominant political discourses emanating from tweeting activity of prominent contenders and the journalistic orientations reflected across the Twitter-based news posts of selected mainstream newspapers during four months period of Nigeria’s 2019 presidential campaign. The qualitative discourse and content analyses of N=1,048 tweets and news posts reveal the dominance of political discourses and journalistic orientations which are likely to foment the deep-rooted sociopolitical polarization within the Nigerian context. The findings illuminate the cogent need for a socially-transformative intervention, which this study addresses by proposing the framework for implementing peace journalism towards improving political communication and journalistic practices in polarized political and media environments amidst a networked public.