10th U6+ Consortium of African Universities International Conference

Against the backdrop of Nigeria's emerging pre-2027 electoral discourse, this study examines how digital citizenship and political participation are constructed through a critical multimodal analysis of five political cartoons by Mustapha Bulama published on Facebook between April and August 2026. The study adopts a qualitative research design and integrates Kress and van Leeuwen's (2006) Visual Grammar with van Dijk's (2008, 2009) Sociocognitive Approach to Critical Discourse Analysis. The analysis focuses on the visual and verbal resources employed in the cartoons, the ideological strategies underlying representations of citizens and political actors, and the negotiation of power relations. The findings reveal that Bulama employs visual metaphors, symbolism, caricature, spatial arrangement, labels, and verbal directives to construct digital citizenship as informed, critical, vigilant, and participatory. The cartoons foreground information verification, resistance to misinformation, candidate scrutiny, transparency, accountability, and informed electoral choice. They also challenge political manipulation, inducement, identity-based mobilisation, and the instrumental use of state power, while positioning citizens as active agents in democratic processes. The study concludes that digitally circulated political cartoons constitute significant forms of political discourse through which digital citizenship, political agency, and democratic accountability are constructed and contested. The study contributes to scholarship on digital citizenship, political communication, and critical multimodal discourse analysis in contemporary Africa, while highlighting the potential of citizen-oriented digital communication to foster informed and inclusive democratic engagement.