**5. Weaponising Instagram: the politics of 'likes' and post dissemination**

Zappavigna [49] uses the term 'social photography' to draw attention to the production and proliferation of social media images on various digital platforms [50]. These images have potentials for becoming viralised when they are circulated across Web 2.0 platforms on the digital space. This reality also suggests that more public engagement, a digital affordance which Chugh et al. [51] attribute to the manifestations of likes, shares and comments, become not only measurable; they also become critical to evaluating the implications of such online discursive contents. Schoendienst and Dang-Xuan [52] share the same perception as they submit that commenting and liking contribute to and help strengthen social relationships especially as the online interactions are simulations of real face-to-face relationships. It is thus unsurprising that users engage in self-disclosure online as a way of cultivating group affinity and aligning with the convictions of the larger public or members of their community. Critical to these public engagements are visuality and representation, especially when they are performed to draw attention and stimulate change in perception. In line with this orientation, Schoonover and Galt [53] submit that:

LGBT political movements have long insisted on publicity as a mode of activism: from Pride marches to anti-homophobic violence actions, to everyday forms of gender expression and even public sex, the street forms a necessary political space for queer representation. What it might mean to be queer – and to perform queerness – on the street varies enormously in different national contexts.

It is in this wise that Ifekandu [54] regards social media spaces as 'safe spaces' for the exertion and assertion of queerness since such spaces afford queer individuals the possibilities of assuming a "surviving mode" Buyantueva [55] away from the inhibitions of non-virtual milieus. This viewpoint is operationalised in **Figure 1** which proclaims the humanity of queer-identifying individuals.

The textual message in the image – We are all the same inside – constitutes both a lamentation against homophobia in Nigeria as well as an advocacy for the acknowledgement and acceptance of queerness. By capitalising the texts and placing each word on a line, the creator foregrounds the message and gives it salience and prominence. The word 'same' contrasts the othering experiences which queer-identifying people are constantly subjected to in Nigeria. By drawing attention to sameness, queer advocates attempt to crush the deprecative constructs which encumber queer

*Weaponising Digital Architecture: Queer Nigerian Instagram Users and Digital Visual Activism DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108760*

**Figure 1.** *We are all the same inside.*

performativity. The linguistic choice of 'we all' further encodes an inclusivist ideology which attempts to reconcile the identitarian notions of 'being' and 'becoming' that manifests in queer discourses. While heteronormativity perceives queerness as a 'becoming' identity, queer rights proponents assert their identities as 'being'. Therefore the realisation of 'we all' breaks the barriers of dichotomies and instead propagates an inclusivist orientation, one which embraces the diversity of sexual and gender identities. The image therefore lends itself to challenging the 'normative silencing' ([36]: 9) and othering to which non-heteronormative identities are subjected. Furthermore, the promotion of a homonormative space is visually stimulated by the background of the text – in the use of the queer rainbow (more discussions on this semiotic resource in a subsequent heading).

Within the examination of 'likes' and virality of post dissemination, Instagram has a peculiarity. While on Facebook and Twitter, the number of likes which a post garners are clearly stated, on Instagram, one has to click on the likes to see its 'likers'. It is therefore more difficult to measure the engagement of posts shared within the context of the propagation and promotion of queerness. According to Ghaisani et al. [56], likes and shares on social media show the impressions of users on the subject of a post. They may also provide insight into user behaviour [57]. An examination of user engagement with **Figure 1** shows that the post was liked by 13 users. However the politics of maintaining visibility or staying in the shadows is brought into better context in relation to **Figure 2**.

If 'likes', 'comments' and 'shares' connote digital engagement of posts on a platform like Instagram, it is thus ironical that the post from @queerasylum in **Figure 2** expressly deters users and members of the Nigerian queer community from overtly revealing their identities or directly engaging the post. The deterrence is however necessary based on the focus of the post: it is to help queer-identifying Nigerians flee the country and gain asylum in queer-enabling spaces. The post acknowledges the toxicity and threats which follow queer visibility in the Nigerian context and attempts to counteract this by protecting the identities of prospective asylum seekers. This it does by directing interested parties to send direct messages to signify their interests. This realisation contrasts the usual or normal expectations where wholesome engagement is rated by the number of views, likes, comments and shares which a post garners (**Figure 3**).

Visuality is also critical to queer advocacy on Instagram. In negotiating the activist thread, one identifies critical engagements of what can be termed 'normative' social perceptions. Using symbols that are mutually meaningful and representative of heterosexuality, the activist handler of @lgbt.ng draws an equation with gender representations coated in the LGBT colours. Through a breakdown which indicates:

**Figure 2.** *No likes.*

*Weaponising Digital Architecture: Queer Nigerian Instagram Users and Digital Visual Activism DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108760*

male + male, male + female; and female + female, the poster asserts that all of these are manifestations of love and are acceptable forms of human identities and relationships. 'Love' is textually realised thrice and also symbolically identifiable thrice. The submission at the end: 'Love knows no limit' suggests that the limitations to the expression of love, one which has criminalised same-sex relations, are merely human creations.

The quest for acceptance and legalisation of queerness is central to queer advocacies in queerphobic spaces. Of course, Nigeria is very anti-queer, an archetype of what Rahul Rao [58] regarded as 'a contemporary gay heart of darkness', and the situation has been worsened with the promulgation of the same-sex marriage prohibition act in 2014. While many of the protestations against the restrictions of the law have mostly been orchestrated online [27], there have been documented low-key physical protests especially since 2020, with queer protesters physically and vocally joining

the #EndSARS protests of October, 2020. Indeed, on May 1, 2022, there was what is considered the 'first open queer protest in Nigeria'. The protesters expressed their opposition to the discriminatory legislations like the crossdressers' bill which was being considered in the nation's legislative houses at the period as well as called for the repeal of the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act. Through their physical activism, they drew attention to the plight of Nigerian 'othered' sexual and gender identities and sought for 'queer liberation now'. This physical assertion of the necessity of queer agency and visibility manifests in **Figure 4** from the Queerasylum handle. Although @queerasylum is not a Nigerian queer handle, the persona behind the handle travels around queer-stifling places and gives publicity to the lived realities of shackled queer existence. In **Figure 4**, one encounters the manifestation of transnational advocacy in queer narratives. Thus while the poster announces that: 'Finally we are in Nigeria. Nigerian's get set', we see a Kenyan flag raised by one of the protesters in recognition

**Figure 4.** *Projecting Nigerian queer protest.*

*Weaponising Digital Architecture: Queer Nigerian Instagram Users and Digital Visual Activism DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108760*

of the challenges faced by queer people in different parts of the continent. Indeed, in April, 2022, a young Kenyan queer, Sheila Lumumba, was gang-raped by six men and murdered in her house in Karatina, Kenya. Such targeted attacks and killings are also rife in Nigeria. This also contextualises the use of full face masks by many of the protesters who, being conscious of the need for protection and safety, hide their faces. However, by providing visibility to the foregrounded placard with the expression: 'Nigeria: LGBT We are together', the queer protesters marshal an ideology of communality. They therefore decry all manifestations of discrimination, rejection and violence against queer-identifying individuals while also expressing a unity of purpose regardless of national affiliations. Through their activist actions and movement digitally and physical, these nascent Nigerian vocal queer protests constitute a decentralised nodal advocacy that 'links the nation across borders and oceans' and instrumentalise a 'new ecumene that enables many of the communicative, cultural and socioeconomic exchanges, which, in the previous 150 years, could only have existed within the structure of a nation-state' [59].

### **6. Handle-tagging and hashtagging for activism and advocacy**

According to Thomas [60], the social media landscape 'shows how the underlying material-semiotic operations of social media now crucially define what it means to be social in a networked age'. This implies that one must engage and contextualise digital practices and online engagements, especially on social media platforms, as 'computational processes of collective individuation that produce, rather than presume, forms of subjectivity and sociality' ([60]: backpage). With specific attention to the affordances and specificities of Instagram, Giannoulakis and Tsapatsoulis [61] aver that image-tagging through the use of photo-hashtags serve as 'annotation metadata' which act as descriptive resource for the 'visual content of an image'. They submit that 'Instagram hashtags, and especially those provided by the photo owner/creator, express more accurately the content of a photo' ([61]: 114). Their observations resonate within the context of the present study as the Instagram handlers integrate hashtags as well as photo-tags in their posts, in recognition of the possibilities available on Instagram as a subset of the digital media ecology.

Thus in **Figure 5**, we encounter the front-page celebration of the popular African-American media personality, Niecy Nash and her spouse, Jessica Betts. Apart from lauding the use of the couple's image on *Essence*, as the first queer couple on the cover of the well-regarded magazine, one can also frame with celebration as an acknowledgement of Niecy Nash's peculiar side story: she used to be in a heterosexual relationship. Consequently her coming out – in which she exposed her attempts at ignoring her sexuality and conforming to heteronormative structures – and embrace of her closeted lesbianism become useful narratives for queer advocacy. Fittingly, the text accompanying the Image closes with 'Black Love Wins' as well as the love emoji and the queer rainbow flag. These textual representations remark the multiple marginalisation and minoritisation which the couple must have faced (and be facing) – they are queer and black. The realisations are transposed to the Nigerian context where being queer automatically translates to invisibility, violent victimisation and government-aided criminalization.

According to Rambukkana [62], hashtags perform three significant functions in digital discourse; they may perform as 'an affective amplifier (sometimes); useful in linking or constituting particular publics (sometimes); and even able to subtend communities'. The accompanying hashtags as shown in **Figure 6** fulfil these functions.

#### **Figure 5.** *Celebrating celebrity visibility.*

**Figure 6.** *Accompanying hashtags.*
