Previous posts: Step 1/In Vitro; Step 2/Sampling; Step 3/Clouds

Before going deeper in the interpretation of the multifaceted issue of the militancy in the Niger Delta, as it can be derived by the tag clouds elaborated in step 3, let me introduce some comments about the sources of information used by the bloggers belonging to the observed sample.

As shown in the picture above, most quoted mainstream media are respectively BBC News, CNN and Nigerian media (in particular the dailies This Day, Vanguard and The Guardian). It is worth noting how, in about half the cases, the observed blogs quoted mainstream media without linking to the source.
 
“Suddenly breaking news on Cnn has maps pointing at us..” wrote the blog And as I Was Saying…, perfectly summarizing the peak of interest towards the Niger Delta that crossed global newsrooms in 2006.

Another peak was recorded in February 2007, when both CNN and magazines such as Vanity Fair and National Geographic dedicated wide coverage to the Niger Delta: “Nigeria is THE news for today - in particular, the Niger Delta”, as the blog Reflections 2 emphasized it.

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Previous posts: Step 1/In Vitro; Step 2/Sampling

The sampled Nigerian blogs have been analyzed to point out which terms (and with which frequency) were used by each blog to define:

• the Niger Delta militants;
• their actions;
• the situation in the Niger Delta;
• the other subjects involved in the issue.

Results are shown in form of tag clouds. The calculation of terms’ recurrences is based on the number of blogs (and not of posts): this means that a term used by a single blogger in several posts is in any case represented with a low frequency.

The following tag cloud shows the frequencies of the terms used by the blogs in the sample to define the Niger Delta militants. “Militants” is by far the most used term, followed by “Criminals” (with its variants, such as “Criminal gangs”, “Murderous criminals”, “Self-confessed criminals”, “Efficient criminal industry”) which recurs less than half the times of the previous term. Together on the third step of the podium, “Kidnappers”, “Terrorists” and “Insurgency” show equal frequencies. It’s worth noting that there are several negative definitions used by single blogs and thus represented with low frequency.

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Previous posts: Step 1/In Vitro

Any sort of scientific search needs a sample and the investigation of the Niger Delta militants definition in the Nigerian blogosphere could not escape such rule. Blogs, written by both Nigerian citizens (living in Nigeria or abroad) and Non-Nigerian citizens living in Nigeria, with at least one post concerning the Niger Delta militants posted in the January 2006-July 2007 timeframe, were selected to compose the sample. In the end, 62 blogs matching the requirements were found through:

• the monitoring of the Nigerian Blogs Aggregator via RSS;
• keywords search with Technorati e Google Blogsearch;
• the geographic search among Blogger’s authors.

About the last point, Blogger is by far the most used publishing platform, with over 75% of the sample’s blogs based on it.

Other 88 blogs, belonging to the Nigerian blogosphere, but not to the sample, were identified during the search. So, as a whole, 150 blogs were analyzed (out of the 368 blogs listed on the Nigerian Blog Aggregator in August 2007).

Statistically, within the sample:

• 90% of the bloggers are Nigerian citizens;
• 25% of the bloggers are women (if the analysis is extended to the total of 150 blogs, such percentage rises up to one third);
• 11% of the bloggers are journalists;
• 8% of the bloggers work/worked for the Nigerian federal government or for the multinational oil companies;
• 3% of the bloggers are expatriates working in the Niger Delta;
• about two thirds of the bloggers wrote a single post about the militants.

Stay tuned for next posts.

Background and Disclaimer
This is the first of several posts devoted to a research I recently accomplished about the Niger Delta militant groups definition in the Nigerian blogosphere. The prime objective of such research was to check, through the Niger Delta case study, the feasibility of the blogosphere to act (and interact) as a source of information for mainstream media. In some way the blogosphere is already a source of journalistic information, but the typical interaction (particularly in Italian mediasphere) is that mass media sack blogs whenever the need of adding some “colour” to the news is felt. As soon as a crime (bloody enough, of course) is committed, sensational reporting start digging deeper and deeper in all social networks looking for victims/suspects’s profiles…

I am Italian (normally this should not be part of a disclaimer…;). I am not a journalist (but the above-mentioned research about Niger Delta militants was done in the frame of a BA thesis in Communication Sciences). I sacked the blogosphere too, in some way: if the spirit of web 2.0 is “conversation”, I was the guy sat apart who listened, unseen, to the Nigerian bloggers talking about Niger Delta militants (sounds quite unfair, doesn’t it?). Besides the limited time available to conduct the research, the reason for such questionable approach was the choice of using a scientific method: the avoidance of any observer effects becomes then a must. The outcome of this research confirms the value of the blogosphere as an additional, enriching, source of information for the mediasphere and the direct interaction between journalists and bloggers is then suggested as a practice for mainstream media (disclaimer: I already believed in such virtuous interaction, nevertheless some facts to support theories are needed from time to time). Nothing new for most of the bloggers out there, I guess, and no more in vitro observations for me, since the aim of this post, and the following ones, is to allow the observed Nigerian bloggers to be (as a minimum) informed of what happened and (desirably) to join this discussion, in order to criticize and improve the method and the results that will be summarized in the following.
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Un immigrato irregolare di origini nigeriane, Osamuyia Aikpitanhi di 23 anni, é morto lo scorso 9 giugno a bordo di un volo Iberia che avrebbe dovuto riportarlo in modo coatto a Lagos. La morte, ufficialmente, é stata causata da un arresto cardiaco, ma accuse di maltrattamenti sono state mosse agli agenti della polizia spagnola che accompagnavano il clandestino e che lo avrebbero lasciato ammanettato, imbavagliato e incappucciato durante il volo. La protesta é subito divampata attraverso la blogosfera nigeriana e ha portato a una giornata di dimostrazioni di fronte alle ambasciate spagnole in diversi paesi (nella foto di Adeola Aderounmu, la lettera di protesta consegnata all’ambasciata spagnola di Stoccolma).

Nel frattempo due sindacati francesi hanno chiesto ad Air France-KLM di sospendere l’uso dei voli di linea per il rimpatrio forzato degli immigrati illegali. Tali rimpatri avvengono infatti con metodi che sono spesso lesivi della dignità e dei diritti fondamentali degli immigrati e, secondo i sindacati, alla lunga possono arrecare un danno di immagine alla compagnia aerea. I maltrattamenti inflitti ai clandestini hanno persino portato in passato a diverbi tra i passeggeri e gli agenti di polizia.

In Italia i rimpatri coatti sono avvenuti sia con voli di linea Alitalia che con charter dedicati e con velivoli militari da trasporto. Sebbene ad oggi non siano riportate segnalazioni di maltrattamenti nei confronti dei clandestini a bordo degli aerei italiani, una scorsa al Rapporto Annuale 2007 di Amnesty International evidenzia come le pratiche usate nella detenzione ed espulsione di immigrati irregolari, ancora ben lontane dagli standard fissati dal diritto internazionale, rappresentino il nocciolo del problema degli abusi di potere in Italia.