FUWUKARI INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY AND DEVELEOPMT (FUWIJSD). Vol.1.No.2 FEBRUARY, 2020. ISSN: 2714-2868. www.fuwijsd.com Page 1 Social Media and Boko Haram Insurgency in Nigeria By Omede, A. J. PhD Department of Political Science, University of Ilorin, Nigeria medajol@yahoo.com & Emmanuel Adeniran Alebiosu Department of Political Science, Federal University Wukari alebiosuemma@gmail.com 08038436474 Abstract The Boko Haram insurgency is one of the major security issues that have troubled the stability of the Nigerian state. In order to effectively sustain its activities within the Nigerian state, the insurgents embraced social media tools. This has been a great concern to the Nigerian government, security agencies and other stakeholders. In spite of this, there are inadequate studies on insurgency and social media in Nigeria. Consequently, this paper focuses on the use of social media by Boko Haram insurgents in Nigeria. It examines implications of Boko Haram insurgents use of social media in Nigeria; and the challenges of the use of social media by the military in its counter-insurgency operations in Nigeria. The paper relied on qualitative content analysis. The findings in the paper indicate that the insurgents use social media in order to issue threat, shape public perception, propagate their ideology, recruit and radicalize members. Also, the paper shows that the military use social media to counter the narratives of the insurgents, enlighten and mobilize the public for peace and security. Among the challenges confronting the military social media usage are the unprofessional use of social media by its personnel at the theatre of operation; and the multiple creations of fake social media accounts which misrepresent the military. The paper recommends that there should be continuous massive orientation of the public about social media and a social media directorate for the military with adequate infrastructure, personnel and funding for the purpose of mining data from social media for intelligence, monitoring and analysis. Keywords: Boko Haram, counter-insurgency, insurgency, military, security, social media Introduction Terrorism is one of the most serious threats to global peace and stability in contemporary times; since the dawn of this millennium, the incidence of terrorism has been on a steady rise worldwide (Akubo & Okolo, 2019). Terrorism is the threat or actual use of illegal force and violence by a non-state actor to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal through fear, coercion, or intimidation (Global Terrorism Index, 2015). In the last 25 years, 88 per cent of all terrorist attacks occurred in countries that were experiencing or involved in violent conflicts