Representation of Social Actors in COVID-19 Gender-Based Violence in Selected Nigerian Newspapers Reports

Abstract

Gender-based violence (hereafter, GBV) is a social issue that increases in all layers of society during COVID-19 pandemic insurgency. The objective of this study is to reveal how social actors are represented in selected Nigerian newspapers reporting of GBV. Data for the study were retrieved from the printed copies of The Vanguard, The Punch, Daily Trust, Premium Times, This Day and The Guidance newspapers' reports in representing the social actors and other activities relating to COVID-19 GBV, published between 2020 and 2021. The selected data were analysed using insights from Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) and van Leeuwen's socio-semantic categorisation version of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The findings show that to detach the actor (exclusion), both of the newspapers mostly presented the actor especially the victim as a passive agent and the perpetrator as an active agent. In all, the social actors are represented using exclusion, activation, determination, I determination, functionalisation, instrumentalist ion, passivation, identification, possessivisation, nomination, association, dissociation, categorisation and collectivisation.The representation, therefore, foreground the labelling of the social actors as punching bags, voice out, sexual object, object of bait; and men as rapists, butchers, and terrors.