Digital Engagements and African Girlhood: How Nigerian Teenage Girls Use Tiktok for Self and Identity Expression

Amarachi J. Onuorah () and R. Nanre Nafziger ()
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Amarachi J. Onuorah: McGill University
R. Nanre Nafziger: McGill University

Chapter Chapter 14 in African Feminist Girlhood Studies and Development, 2025, pp 261-282 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Nafzinger and Onuorah bring in innovative approaches accessing girls’ perspectives by undertaking textual analysis of social media sites. Focusing on how Nigerian teenage girls use digital media to navigate complex social relationships, the authors rightly situate girls’ lived experiences into global conversations based on their digital content creation. This research draws from Black girlhood studies to contextualize Nigerian girls in the twenty-first century as digital content creators and users. It explores how five Nigerian teenage girls use their TikTok accounts to express themselves and their cultural identities and how their online contents represent everyday resistance to gender and cultural stereotypes. ‘Digital Engagements and African Girlhood: How Nigerian Teenage Girls Use TikTok For Self And Identity Expression’ concludes with a set of critical questions for further research into girls’ self-expression and identity formation through social media. The questions raise include: (1) How do young girls express their cultural and social identity using social media? (2) How do social media affordances bolster their agency of self-expression? (3) Can the Black girlhood theoretical framework be used to explain the agency of Nigerian girls using social media?

Keywords: Digital engagement; Girlhood; Identity; Nigeria; Representation; Self-expression; Social media; Teenage; TikTok (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:gdechp:978-3-031-91561-1_14

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-91561-1_14

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