This study investigates socio-semiotic persuasion in political cartoons
published in selected Nigerian newspapers during the 2023 fuel subsidy
removal. Drawing on a socio-semiotic approach to multimodality, the study
examines how visual and verbal resources—symbolism, exaggeration, irony,
and labelling—are deployed to construct persuasive meanings around
economic policy and its socio-political consequences. Rather than treating
cartoons as merely satirical or illustrative texts, the study conceptualises them
as multimodal sites where ideological meanings are visually organised and
circulated within the public sphere. Adopting a descriptive research design,
the study combines qualitative socio-semiotic analysis with frequency
mapping. Fourteen political cartoons purposively selected from five Nigerian
newspapers—Vanguard, Business Day, The Will News Media, New
Telegraph, and Leadership—published between July 2022 and December 2023
were analysed. The inclusion of cartoons produced prior to the formal policy
implementation captures anticipatory discourse and situates the 2023
representations within an extended communicative trajectory. Qualitative
analysis focused on identifying recurring socio-semiotic strategies and
interpreting their persuasive functions, while frequency mapping was used to
support analytical patterns without statistical generalisation. Findings reveal
that persuasion is achieved through patterned visual configurations that
consistently depict the state as an abstract and coercive site of decision-making while citizens are represented as embodied bearers of socio-economic strain.
Economic reform is thereby framed as socially disruptive rather than neutral
or technocratic. Across newspapers, recurring representational patterns
reinforce similar interpretive orientations, contributing to the normalisation of
critique and shaping public understanding of governance, responsibility, and
economic impact during a period of national crisis.
