Nigeria: How Social Media Is Affecting Production, Consumption of Literature

Kaduna — When Romeo Oriogun, the Nigerian poet who recently won the 2017 Brunel African International Poetry Prize, said all the poems he submitted were written on Facebook and inspired by his Facebook friends, I wanted to curse the online literary magazine's editor who rejected my work two months ago by saying their magazine would not publish works of "Facebook writers." In the weeks that followed, I suffered rigorous internal reconsiderations, among which was the emotional persuasion to stop sharing my literary contents on social media and dedicate myself to becoming a "reality artist." But all the reality I wanted to align myself with, failed to prove realistic as I failed to find a better platform of accumulating the required audience to savour my works.

The truth is that we have reached an age where the entirety of our lives is tied to social media platforms. From our relationships to hobbies, and even official engagements, social media sites like Twitter and Facebook have infiltrated parts of our existence that used to be private and sacred. Social media has also given us the opportunity to do ingenious things, stand out from the crowd and achieve viral status online. It has also created ways for us to fight injustice and crude values, build better communities, dispense vital information and discuss ideas and contemporary issues about society and politics. Consequently, it has also managed to influence the world of literature in some surprisingly amazing ways.

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