La evaluación

As a way of representing the complexity of the subject of this research investigation into the digital public sphere in Nigeria, I constructed in the previous sections an outline of the central characteristics of its historical political and legal contexts. This constituted the field of research. In this section I will therefore clarify my approach to field research, and the various methodological and theoretical questions that it raises, before considering my interview findings. I have chosen interviews as a means of offering verifiable, explicit and contemporary insight into the embryonic public sphere, where few publications and little data are available.

Outline and Rational

Traditionally, the methodology section of a thesis comprises steps taken by the researcher in order to respond to the research questions guiding his/her respective study. In this introductory chapter of Section Three I will simply explain the nature of my selected method – field research interviews – and discuss its objectives and significance. This section is important as it also conveys the extraneous factors and unforeseen circumstances that may have

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affected the outcome of the research, hence allowing the limits of the analysis and discussion to be clearly plotted. In order for the reader to understand the connection between the research problem, questions and findings, this methodology section needs to be clearly structured. The systematic nature of conducting a social scientific research makes it pertinent that the researcher reveals in a step-by-step format, how he/she approached the research questions, laying emphasis on the limitations of the study therein.

Research interviews can function productively in both qualitative or quantitative frameworks of analysis. Of course, human beings are conversational beings, and so the interview is not in itself a pure research method, or at least a research method that could claim pure objectivity. The process of gathering knowledge through conversation precedes the adoption of interview as a qualitative research method. A classic definition of interviews by Maccoby & Maccoby (1954) as cited by Brinkmann (2013), ‘a face-to-face verbal exchange, in which one person, the interviewer, attempts to elicit information or expressions of opinion or belief from another person or persons’ (Brinkmann, 2013: 1). However, the interview method has gone beyond the face-to-face interview to encompass other forms such as phone interviews, email interviews and others. Gubrium & Holstein give a more up-to-date description of interview research. It goes thus: ‘The interviewer coordinates a conversation aimed at obtaining desired information. He or she makes the initial contact, schedules the event, designates its location, sets out the ground rules, and then begins to question the interviewee or respondent. Questions elicit answers in more or less

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anticipatable format until the interviewer’s agenda is completed and the interview ends’. (Gubrium & Holstein, 2001:3).

Qualitative interviewing, to be precise, as the case is in this study, is one that is founded on conversation, with emphasis on the researcher asking questions and listening for responses. It might be similar to the Survey Interview method, but unlike that, ‘interview respondents are more likely to be viewed as meaning makers, not passive conduits for retrieving information from an existing vessel of answers’ (Warren, 2001: 83). These interviews may be unstructured, structured or semi-structured. Structured interviews are used in survey research, and follow the same format as questionnaires. Unstructured interview on the other hand ‘have little preset structure’; examples are ‘the life story interview’ (Brinkmann, 2013: 20). The semi-structured interview is located somewhat in-between both formats (to be further explained subsequently). Brinkmann highlights that the distinction to be made between these three forms of interview need to be ‘thought of as a continuum ranging from relatively structured to relatively unstructured formats’ (2013: 18). For surely there is no such thing as a completely structured interview, where the interviewer has a strictly pre- determined agenda of knowledge to elicit from the respondent. In Brinkmann’s words, ‘utterances that “spill beyond the structure” are often quite important’ and are sometimes significant in understanding the interviewees’ responses (2013: 18). In the same vein, regarding the unstructured format, Brinkmann argues that ‘since the interviewer always has an idea about what should take place in the conversation,’ no such thing exists as a completely unstructured interview.

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I determined that the semi-structured format is best suited to this research study. Brinkmann (2013: 21) posits that the semi-structured may be regarded as the most common form of interview in human and social sciences. In comparison to the structured or unstructured interview, the semi-structured interview has the following advantages: (i) they can make effective use of the knowledge- producing potentials of dialogue by giving allowance for follow-up ‘on whatever angles are deemed important by the interviewer’; (ii) the interviewer also has more control in steering the conversation to issues significant to the research project (Brinkmann, 2013: 21). Brinkmann defines the semi-structured interview as ‘an interview with the purpose of obtaining descriptions of the life world of the interviewee in order to interpret the meaning of the described phenomena’ (Brinkmann, 2013: 21). The emphasis of this definition is on three points: purpose, description (of life world) and interpretation of meaning. This research study employed the semi-structured interview method, carried out on a field research trip to Nigeria. This research method was best suited to the study for various reasons.

Firstly, Nigeria is a developing society where the adoption of digital media technology is still emerging. Developments are taking place at an accelerated pace, and as a researcher, one needs to be in the field to go beyond observing how these changes are taking place, to gathering data on people’s experiences in using digital media tools for public communication. Secondly, the concept of the digital public sphere is relatively new, and in order to map the digital public sphere in a developing society, where information and communication

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technology is equally emerging, the interview method is the most effective in determining the pace, context and practices of this new terrain. Effectively mapping a digital public sphere entails gathering data on people’s experiences on these digital communicative spaces; while quantitative statistics from

marketing research firms may exist as to how many people are using a

particular technological device or service, or visiting a webpage, the interview

method enables the researcher understand how and why it is being used - this

provides insight into the culture of the people’s digital media use.

In the data used for the next two chapters, the interview format was semi- structured, to grant respondents the leeway to share information they deemed relevant to the subject that the researcher may not have considered when drawing up the interview guide. These semi-structured interviews were conducted in Nigeria at locations such as offices, technology hubs, and other relatively quiet spaces. The interviews were audio recorded and later transcribed for analysis. The interviewees on the other hand, were grouped into seven categories, and they were required to meet certain criteria to be fit for interview on this research study. These categories are:

1. Public officials

2. Mainstream journalists

3. Information technology experts 4. Social activists

5. Bloggers/Citizen journalists 6. Religious leaders

7. Cultural producers

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Nigeria’s digital media space.

Public officials: People who work in government, from governors, to their special assistants, who are active users of digital media, especially for engagement with the public. They could be safely described as ‘mouthpieces of the government online’.

Mainstream journalists: The press occupied a key role in the traditional public sphere of Habermas’ narrative. Here, although digital media has expanded the definition of journalism beyond the press, traditional journalism (otherwise known as old media) are still central to understanding the digital public sphere in Nigeria.

Information Technology experts (app developers): This group is significant to the digital public sphere because they create the locally relevant technology that is used in discourse or action directly or indirectly. An example is the interviewee who designed the Nigerian Federal Constitution for Blackberry App.

Social Activists: People who have been involved in one public social cause or the other; whether solely online or solely offline but use digital media tools for their processes.

Bloggers/Citizen Journalists: This group comprised active bloggers who either ran their own platforms or were astute contributors to other citizen platforms.

Religious Leaders: Given that religion is a strong part of the Nigerian public sphere, right from the colonial period, religious leaders who were active digital media users formed part of the respondents of this study.

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Nigerian public sphere as they create and distribute (cultural) media messages that filter into public sphere discourse. An example of cultural producers are film and documentary producers.

Although the interviewees were organised into clear categories or groups as listed above, in the following chapters their responses, presented in narrative form, are presented using another categorization. Where interviewees’ professions and civic/social roles, such as ‘journalist’ or ‘activist’ are useful in simplifying the diversity of public sphere participants I interviewed (as seen in the Appendix), in the discussion chapters it became necessary to represent their contributions in terms of our prior construction of a theoretical concept of the digital public sphere – in terms of new media platforms, communication techniques, dialogue and issues, and so on. This was for several reasons, both theoretical and pragmatic.

First, theoretically, the purpose of agglomerating a diverse range of interviewees was to demonstrate the substantial presence of civil society and non- governmental actors within public debate and the forms of public communications that are becoming formative of a ‘public sphere’. To the extent that this was a fundamental aim of this thesis, they were required to represent roles and contributions within the increasingly broad civil participation in public discourse as defined by the introductory sections of this thesis.

Second, pragmatically, arranging them so, also afforded me the opportunity to represent them in a more significant light, as contributors to a broader discourse

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of an emerging public and not merely as individual civil society actors representing their own interests or simply airing their own personal views. So arranged, the interviewees are positioned within the structural development of a new public sphere in Nigeria, and the knowledge and perceptions they so express are not merely indicative of their profession or limited context of social class, but pertain to the functioning of the public discourse within Nigerian democratic society.

Furthermore, the fluidity and complexity of the content of the interviews (the interviewees were unpredictable, and could swiftly change subjects, or talk about multiple subjects simultaneously) could be more intelligibly accommodated by assigning single statements to our categories of public sphere development. The interview responses revealed, furthermore, that as professionals and established interlocutors in an embryonic public sphere, their roles became increasingly blurred, as their views, their professional position, and indeed digital media itself, changed rapidly. A freelance journalist by day may also be a social activist by night; the same could apply to the social activist, who may from time to time, assume the role of a private individual running a business, yet, in the same digital public sphere reach the same audience segments for these different communications. It is a structural feature of Nigerian society and its labour markets, that even professionals often have two jobs or represent two very different roles within the same company or position of responsibility.

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Representing our interviewees in terms of their profession, therefore, may indeed misrepresent the content of their interview responses, implying that they are a ‘sample’ viewpoint of their profession, and in Nigeria this cannot be assumed. Diversity in opinion and viewpoint is another feature of Nigerian society, and in no place I wished to imply that individual professions were representative of the views or opinion of that profession (unless where I specifically make that point). The most effective and transparent means by which to contain this complexity was therefore to place an emphasis on the conceptual content of interviewee’s statements, and situate this within an aforementioned category that would further my thesis on the development of a public sphere.

The snow-ball technique was employed in identifying and soliciting participants. This technique is defined by Atkinson & Flint (2013, online) as a way of gathering research subjects through identifying an initial subject, who then links the researcher to other prospective subjects. Atkinson and Flint (2013, online) propose that the technique is primarily used ‘as a response to overcome the problems associated with understanding and sampling concealed populations such as the socially deviant and the socially isolated’ (Atkinson and Flint, 2013: Online). While the participants in this research study did not fall in either the category of the socially deviant or isolated, the snowball technique was relevant (per category) in that the area of study, digital public sphere, made it crucial that the participants met certain criteria such as: being active users of the digital media communicative space, belonging to one or more of the slated categories.

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For social movements for instance, there had to be identifiable advocated causes.

The snowball technique can be used within a wider set of methodologies (Atkinson & Flint, 2013), hence, for this study, other methods that were

employed for an effective field research process included digital participant

observation. This involves the researcher being a member of social media network(s) where potential respondents were already active, and observe their interactions online - sometimes contributing to their general discussion. The researcher used this digital participant observation method to take advantage of social network platforms on the web, envisioned as new public sphere sites where public discourse takes place, in order to establish an initial list of potential respondents. These purposively selected respondents were observed and then recruited into the sample size, and they then offered referrals of other potential respondents within their respective categories. For this study, there were a total of thirty-eight (38) participants interviewed during the field research, data from 35 have been used in this research. Each interview lasted a minimum of thirty minutes.