A Socio-Semiotic Analysis of Ideological Multimodal Framing of Selected 2023 Gubernatorial Candidates of Nigeria’s General Election Campaign Posters

Abstract

The study examined campaign posters produced to advertise gubernatorial candidates in Nigeria’s 2023 general elections. The paper critically investigated text producers’ ideological framing of semiotic resources in campaign posters which is intended to present gubernatorial candidates as desirable choices during the campaigns. The purposive sampling method was adopted for the selection of data from posters produced for gubernatorial candidates of All Progressives Congress (APC), Labour Party (LP), and People Democratic Party (PDP) in Enugu, Kano, Lagos and River States. The data gathered included those produced and circulated between September 2022 and March 2023. This period covers the beginning of the campaigns for the general elections to 24 hours before the gubernatorial elections. The research adopted a qualitative descriptive approach grounded in Kress and van Leeuwen’s social semiotic theory, focusing on the ideational, interpersonal, and textual metafunctions in the posters. The findings of the study revealed that candidates across the four states employed a combination of ethnic, religious, welfare, collective and cultural ideologies to appeal to voters’ identities. In addition, the analysis showed that the campaign posters were carefully designed with verbal and visual semiotic resources to project the candidates as ideal leaders while subtly delegitimising their opponents. The study concluded that campaign posters are not merely promotional tools, but are ideological constructs shaped by Nigeria’s socio-political realities.