Date:
Location:
“The Digital Public Sphere in Nigeria: Politics, Participation, and Polarization”
Speaker:
Tolu Ogunlesi, Fellow, Weatherhead Scholars Program. Special Assistant to the President, Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Contacts:
Jacob Olupona
Olupona@fas.harvard.edu
Darren Kew
Darren.kew@umb.edu
Co-sponsored by the Center for Peace, Democracy, and Development (CPDD), UMass Boston.
This event is online only. Please click the "Read More" link for full instructions on how to attend this seminar.
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Abstract:
Nigeria’s ‘Digital Public Sphere’ is a recent phenomenon, made possible, as the name implies, by recent and emerging digital technologies, mainly the Internet and smartphones. In the time since the Digital Public Sphere emerged in Nigeria, there have been several online-led movements that have had significant impact in Nigeria and beyond, including #OccupyNigeria, #BringBackOurGirls and #EndSARS. Social Media and the Internet are no doubt positively driving levels of political interest and participation, especially around elective politics, and especially among young Nigerians. But they are also deepening existing divides, amplifying polarization, and fueling misinformation and disinformation; phenomena that are of course not limited to Nigeria.
Tolu will explain what this Digital Public Sphere means, in the Nigerian context, and how it differs from what came before it. He will discuss how these new and emerging technologies have shaped and are shaping that sphere and expanded the possibilities for Nigerians to engage with politics, government, and activism. He will also highlight how the Internet can and does influence ‘traditional’ media coverage of politics and policy issues, and local and foreign perceptions of Nigerian issues, determining what is amplified and what is ignored: a new form of ‘digital divide’ (online reality vs on-the-ground reality). Finally, he will examine how Nigeria can promote the positives and tame the negatives associated with this new age of internet-mediated politics, including using technology to expand citizen participation in the policy debate and implementation space, breaking out of the existing dominant focus on inevitably hyper-partisan election seasons.
Speaker Bio:
Tolu Ogunlesi is currently the Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria on Digital and New Media, and Head of the Presidency Office of Digital Engagement (PODE). Prior to this he worked as Strategic Communications Adviser to Nigeria’s Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment. Between 2009 and 2015, he worked as a journalist, columnist, and contributor to Nigerian and international newspapers, including the Financial Times, New York Times, Financial Mail (South Africa), Forbes Africa, the London Guardian, CNN.com and several others.
He is a two-time winner of the CNN Multichoice African Journalism Award; a Nordic Africa Institute Guest Writer (2008); a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Fellow (2013); a 2015 New Media Fellow of the U.S. State Department's International Visitor Leadership Programme (IVLP); a 2016 Winner of Nigeria’s DAME Prize for Informed Commentary; and a 2021 Laureate of the French-African Foundation Young Leaders Program, and currently a Visiting Scholar at Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs (WCFIA).
He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Pharmacy from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, and a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia, UK. In 2016, he set up the Presidency Office of Digital Engagement (PODE), to serve as an in-house Digital Agency for the Nigerian Presidency and the Government of Nigeria.
