**4. Methodology**

In March 2020, Twitter was taken over with #EndHomophobiaInNigeria, a reaction to the murder of a gay man in Imo state, Nigeria. The incident portrayed the dark side of queer hook-up culture. This led to the coming together of LGBT Nigerians and activists to condemn this act of violence and advocate against homophobia using the hashtag. I collected a total of 87 tweets posted between March 2020 and August 31, 2022. March 2020 captures the emergence of the EndHomophobiaInNigeria campaign. However, till 2022, the hashtag continued to be in use since sexual minorities continue to suffer backlash as a result of their gender identities. Out of the 87 tweets, 82 were pro-gay while only five were against the movement. Tweets in favor of same-sex practice were purposively selected since the understanding of how sexual minorities construct their identities is the focus of this study. Only 34 pro-gay tweets provided the sample for this study. The tweets are numbered TWT1-TWT35. ("TWT" stands for "tweet.") In the analysis, however, only a few relevant tweets from the various discursive categories are reproduced.

I adopted a qualitative approach to analyze the contents of the tweets, which I viewed as identity discourse. The tweets were subjected to CDA and linguistic analysis. CDA allows an examination of the contributions of language to identity and ideological formations as identifiable within the context of same-sex relations, while SFL provides linguistic tools for analyzing discourse engagements. Ideological and identity discourses very often demonstrate evidence of the positive "we" representation and the negatives "other" representation. The categories applied in the analysis include actors' descriptions and disclaimers (dissociating from negative identities). Under SFL, transitivity, mood, and modality are considered in the analysis of how the identities of the in-group are defined. For instance, the kind of processes associated with the "we" and their ideological functions are explored. The analysis is done in relation to the Nigerian sociopolitical context.
