Vanguard is one of Nigeria’s oldest surviving newspapers. In 1983, Sam Amuka-Pemu and three friends founded the newspaper. According to reports, the newspaper first appeared on newsstands in 1984. Vanguard is one of the national newspapers that uses the Internet to reach millions of readers, in line with the expected transformation of businesses based on emerging technologies.
According to our analyst’s observations of technology adoption, Vanguard has converged and continue to converge with technologies such as social and immersive interactive media with the intention of creating and disseminating valuable socioeconomic and political content through various forms of reporting.
Cartoons are another way that the newspaper, like other independent newspapers, uses a humorous approach to report socioeconomic and political challenges in addition to using news and editorial formats. Cartoons are frequently used to critique issues when news reports fail to elicit the desired responses or actions from concerned parties.
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According to science “the modern comic strip dates from the late 19th century, when artists such as Rudolph Dirks, inventor of the Katzenjammer Kids, began drawing them for American newspapers; and the animated cartoon was born in 1907, when French artist Émile Cohl began drawing people and other images directly onto movie film.”
As previously stated, cartoons are now primarily used in newspapers to convey political commentary and editorial opinion, and in magazines to convey social comedy and visual wit. Since the emergence of cartoons as a format for reporting events, academics and independent researchers have studied them in order to uncover the social and political implications of the themes cartoonists communicated.
Some previous studies that used Vanguard cartoons revealed how the newspaper used them (cartoons) to establish power imbalance and government neglect. The cartoons in Vanguard have also highlighted various forms of corruption, insecurity, hunger, violence, theft, and other social vices.
Who is in the shadowgraph?
Meanwhile, our analyst concluded that the newspaper is redefining the use of cartoon as a sociopolitical object after several days of observing the newspaper’s Facebook page with a specific interest in how the newspaper curated people’s lives and/or activities using shadowgraph. This is based on the fact that every day, shadow images of prominent people such as politicians, business leaders, and celebrities are created and shared with millions of readers.
The Vanguard newspaper frequently publishes brief messages that provide hints about the subjects of the shadow images. In other instances, the Facebook page post series’ title, GUESS WHO, is written without any indication of the person in the image. According to our analyst, this examines the readers’ psychological makeup and mental acuity.
Following readers’ interactions with the images for ten days revealed that many newspaper readers correctly identified the people in the images. The readers also have a tradition of outlining persons’ prior good and bad deeds. When the individuals are well-known politicians, the bad behaviour is quickly exposed. When the people are celebrities, the good deeds are highlighted the most.
Our analyst concludes from these observations that Vanguard is curating people’s lives and inspiring readers to curate the past and discuss it in light of current realities.