Abstract

This study explored the digitalised imagistic narratives on the most popular Social Network Site – Facebook- examining the undercurrent ideological impressions for the Nigerian nation's polity. Three digital #END SARS Protest images were directly sourced from Facebook Social Network Sites and subjected critical denotative and connotative discourse analysis. Findings reveal messages and meanings in the images as products of powerful artistic statement, and expressions of the nation's socio-cultural and political experiences. The blood-stained Nigerian flag fixes the ideational metafunction of the digitalized grammatical structures housed in the blood and the flag. The acronymic metaphor of #ENDSARS carries ideological load of the much talk-about restructuring which is believed to be the only instrument of rescue for the 1914 patchwork called Nigeria from the precipice. The crying toddler symbolises the innocent Nigerian youths who have, over the years, received 'stones' in place of 'bread', weeping for good governance. These uses of images as semiotic resources are indicative of language as intruder relaying the users' yearning for better life in a hitherto bitter society. It was discovered that messages and meanings in the images are products of the artists' (the Nigerian youths) ideological creativity and digital platform by which stories, experiences and powerful statements are relayed. Hence, importance of visual images as unique and powerful semiotic resources that have a number of advantages over words calls for more investigative efforts not only for their socio-political significance but also for their useful language pedagogy.