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The study aims to explore how language is used in social media to support or oppose presidential candidates during Nigeria's 2023 elections.

Language use and (de)legitimation strategies among supporters of the three major presidential candidates in Nigeria’s 2023 general elections

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The study aims to explore how language is used in social media to support or oppose presidential candidates during Nigeria's 2023 elections.
Descriptive qualitative design using 150 purposively selected tweets from a total of 7,500 collected between July 2022 and February 2023.
Analysis of tweets concerning three major candidates: Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Peter Obi, and Atiku Abubakar, using van Leeuwen’s legitimation theory.
Identification of language strategies including sarcasm, humour, and verbal aggression.
Language strategies for (de)legitimation included authorisation (40%), rationalisation (33%), and moral evaluation (53%), with mythopoesis absent.
Strong instances of sarcasm, humour, and hyperbolic statements noted among users.
Short-form constraints on X limit narrative strategies, affecting storytelling in political discussions.

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Descriptive qualitative analysis of language use in tweets supporting Nigerian presidential candidates, highlighting communication strategies.

Olatunji et al. (2026) studied this question.

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Descriptive qualitative analysis of language use in tweets supporting Nigerian presidential candidates, highlighting communication strategies.