SocialMediaTrends: #EndSARS emoji, ‘no fuel’ for protesters, Beyonce’s silence & other stories

The social media space in Nigeria has continued to care mostly about the #EndSARS protest that is going on across major cities in the country, with the conversations seeming unending.

Multiple hashtags have continued to emerge on Twitter, as the struggle is showing no sign of slowing down, especially after receiving international recognition and support.

On Friday, the support from Twitter co-founder and CEO, Jack Dorsey, went a step further as the American verified more frontliners of the #EndSARS movement, including Aisha Yesufu, Bolatito Oduala also known as Rinu.

Recall that a group known as Feminist Coalition, FK Abudu and a few others had on Wednesday seen their handles verified by the social app, following Mr. Dorsey’s endorsement of the protests.

#EndPoliceBrutality, #ReformtheNigerianPolice, #LazyNigerianYouthSpeaks, #LazyNigerianYouthUnite, #EndInsecurityNow, #BadGovernmentInNigeria, #RestructureNigeriaNow, #Sorosokenodeydisguise, are all discussion trends affiliated to the struggle, which all made it to the trends table on Friday. Here are a few trends that however, caught our attention:

#EndSARS

This original hashtag for the agitations to end police brutality and scrap the defunct Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) of the Nigeria Police, came alive in style on Friday morning, as Twitter assigned a special emoji to it.

The emoji, a tight fist representing the #EndSARS movement, is in the Nigerian national colours (green and white), and it was first tweeted by Mr. Dorsey.

This happened after Twitter returned from a temporary outage, causing the hashtag to trend alongside #TwitterDown.

Twitter had, between the late hours of Thursday and the early hours of Friday, experienced an outage, for which users were unable to tweet across the globe.

The protests continued…

Read Also: SocialMediaTrends: #Anonymous, Lagos thugs, return of NYSC & other trending stories

Beyonce

American singer, Beyonce, trended with over 200 thousand tweets on Friday, right after Nigerian music artist, Tiwa Savage, called her out for her silence since the the #EndSARS protests began in Nigeria.

The R&B and pop singer received the much attention especially since she was almost dubbed “Mama Africa” for featuring a number of African artists in her most-recent album. Few tweeps, however, considered the backlash on the singer unnecessary.

https://twitter.com/eseamros/status/1316791858798956546?s=08

Forte

Ardova PLC, formerly Forte Oil Plc, made it to the Twitter trends table after a user identified as Irose Gold Obiagheli Adanma, accused the company of refusing to sell fuel to #EndSARS protesters at their branch in Abuja.

Protesters who engaged the tweet expressed their disappointment over what thet perceived as alignment between the government and Forte PLC to frustrate their efforts.

#JosProtest

#EndSARS protesters in Jos, Plataeu State, have joined other states nationwide in the fight against police brutality.

As was obtainable in states like Abuja and Lagos, protesters in Jos have been repelled by security operatives with guns and tear gas. The struggle continued regardless.

https://twitter.com/AntiSARSReports/status/1317014617625890817?s=08

…By Okiemute Abraham

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