Ethnicities and Conflict: A Survey Experiment on the Effect of Narrative Framing on Perceptions in Jos, Nigeria

Abstract

Where ethnic violence divides groups by both religious and tribal affiliation, how does the ‘ethnic’ characterization of conflict affect perceptions of the crises? From a survey experiment in Jos, Nigeria, we find that priming respondents with religious versus tribal conflict frames leads respondents to differently interpret the causes of violence, with religious issues viewed as the most salient cause of violence and religion the most important solution. The findings emphasize that where more than one ethnic identity is salient to conflict, the causes of violence take on different meaning depending on how individuals interpret the ethnic dimension of local violence.

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank many individuals and institutions that assisted with this research project. Thank you to Katrina Korb and Danny McCain, professors at the University of Jos for providing vital logistical support as well as local knowledge for the sampling techniques. Additional thanks to Stephen Nemeth for help with the initial stages of the project. Thank you to the Department of Political Science, the Centre for Conflict Management and Peace Studies, and the Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Jos for their institutional support. The following research assistants did invaluable work on this project: Sanni Moses Peter, Abdullahi Yusuf, Abdullahi Salmanu, Abubakar Nabeel Abdulkareem, Bot Polycarp Moses, Bulus Jonathan Charles, Chidozie Diamond Anyalewechi, Francis Emmanuel Tsaku, Fariatu Yahuza Ahmad, Ibrahim Musa Nuhu, Salihu Madinatu, Mafeng David Bot, Temitope Olamide Osoba, Omeka Matthew, and Ruqayya Sulaiman Nayaya.

Supplemental Data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/17449057.2020.1863019.

Data Availability Statement

Data available through the Oklahoma State institutional repository (SHAREOK) at https://doi.org/10.22488/okstate.20.000004.

Notes

1 Note that references to ‘tribe’ or ‘tribal identity’ are not intended to be derogatory or imply something backward about African or Nigerian society. While some scholars prefer to use the ‘ethnic’ or ‘ethno-linguistic’ descriptors, we use the term tribe or ethno-tribal for two important reasons. First, the designation ‘ethnic’ is commonly used as an umbrella category for various ethnic identities – e.g. language, caste, race, tribe, and religion (Chandra, 2012, p. 9; Chandra & Wilkinson, 2008, p. 519; Horowitz, 1985, p. 53). This can be confusing when talking about two categories of ethnicity. Second, and more importantly, Nigerians themselves refer to their ethno-linguistic or kinship identity as their tribal affiliation, as is common throughout Africa (Miguel, 2004, p. 329; Posner, 2007, pp. 1303–1304).

2 Note that we use communal and ethnic violence or riots interchangeably, consistent with work by other scholars (e.g. Horowitz, 2001, p. 1).

3 Initially, we collected 2,209 surveys. We deleted 17 surveys that were flagged by research assistants as problematic (e.g. a case where the randomization protocol for household participants failed), and there were 139 incomplete surveys (i.e. no ending time stamp was recorded). The larger issue was that despite daily efforts to monitor research assistants, we discovered a cluster of surveys that took an incredibly short amount of time, and were tied to a single research assistant. We discovered that this research assistant had fabricated surveys, and as a precaution, all 284 surveys in which this individual was involved were removed from the sample. A data appendix containing more information can be found at http://peterrudloff.net/files/jos_data_appendix.pdf.

4 There may be political or logistical reasons for placing polling stations other than population density. Political leaders might place polling stations in locations that are more easily defended from attack. A political regime, to ensure that a group is underrepresented in an election, might provide relatively few polling places in certain ethnic areas. This introduces potential bias along ethnic dimensions.

5 We further discuss the ethical challenges of carrying out this type of research in an area that has experienced communal conflict in a subsequent methods paper (Rudloff & Vinson, in press).

6 The full set of questions are available from the authors.

7 See Rudloff and Vinson (in press) for the discussion of the ethical considerations and procedures adopted to design this project in a manner sensitive to the Jos environment and participants’ experiences of communal violence.

8 Tables 1 and 2 in the paper appendix contain full cross-tabulations of the treatments and key issue and ­group dependent variables. A significant number of respondents identified political and economic factors as important, other in terms of blame and the issues causing the conflict. This is unsurprising, given that the intersection of economic and political factors with the identity-based factors we are interested in for this paper (e.g. see Vinson & Rudloff, in press). Although the purpose of this paper is on the importance of disaggregating identity dimensions of conflict, it is important to note that this does not preclude the importance of material factors.

9 Additionally, across all four treatments, a sizeable portion of respondents (between 22 and 29 percent) blame ‘terrorists’ for the violence in Jos (see Table 1 in the appendix), suggesting that the increase in Boko Haram violence in northern Nigeria since 2011 is influencing how individuals interpret communal violence.

10 For the religious treatment, proportion(religious treatment) > proportion(control) leads to p = 0.0157; for tribal treatment, proportion(tribal treatment) > proportion(control) leads to p = 0.0305; and for combined ethnic treatment, proportion(ethnic treatment) > proportion(control) leads to p = 0.0858.

11 The creation of Jos North from the larger Jos Local Government Area in 1991 exacerbated the politics of indigeneity and Jos ownership, as indigenous groups perceived this move by the national government as effectively ceding to the Hausa population control of the main Jos metropolis, the majority in this area (Ostien, 2009, pp. 8–9; Kwaja, 2011; Krause, 2011; Vinson, 2017, p. 212ff). There have long been calls for the federal government to address the constitution’s vague definition of indigeneity, as it allows state and local governments to determine at their own whim or for political interests who ‘legitimately’ deserves certificates of indigeneity (e.g. Human Rights Watch, 2006; Kwaja, 2011; Osaretin & Akov, 2013).

12 Human Rights Watch (2001) discusses how religion was used as a litmus test in the Jos 2001 conflagration.

13 Anonymous, interview by Laura Thaut Vinson, March 30, 2011, Jos, Nigeria.

14 Indeed, Table 1 in the paper appendix indicates that political actors are seen as more commonly to blame than religious or tribal groups, and Table 2 in the paper appendix indicates that political issues are seen as the second most important cause behind religious issues.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Peace Research Grant Program of the International Peace Research Association Foundation.