Finding Representative Participants Using Social Media

My research looks into Nigeria's #EndSARS movement which had a global impact in October 2020. The movement called for the disbandment of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad of the Nigerian Police who were accused of diverse forms of police brutality. Social media was utilised to amplify the voices of the Nigerian people, to organise, and to mobilise support for protests and demonstrators, as has been done in the past with comparable incidents throughout the world. This opened up a database over 8 million possible participants for my research. My poster outlines the process I used in approaching the selection process. I show how the available data on social media can be harnessed towards identifying participants who can provide data that is representative of the wider population. The process includes 3 stages namely – Purposive selection, crystallisation and social network analysis. I identified 122 individuals with varying levels of influence, activism experience and location. After sharing the research details individually across this sample set, 19 participants agreed to work with me on the project. The network distribution and characteristics of the 19 participants show how diverse they are and the potential for getting data that covers a significant range of perspectives.