ABSTRACT
The phenomenal frequency of mob attacks on suspects of varying criminal offences in Nigeria has grown beyond being local concerns among the justice dispensation stakeholders and within the Nigeria communities. The social media is evolving as instrumental triggers of jungle justice and have consequently situated it as a global issue that requires critical academic attention. The essence of this research is to expound the evolving journalistic functions of the social media as projectors of actions and reactions of the mob and extra-judicial activities. The paper examines the social news channel, the nature of the news agents, the contents (mob attacks) and effects of these contents on the users. (Social) Media Effect theory was employed to justify the relationship between media and mob justice. The cognitive process model of the media effect theory provides elaborate bases that define the accessibility principles. These are the principles that focus on the social media effects on users and how the media have evolved as propagators of mob outbreaks. Using netnography to obtain information by sending unstructured questions to social media users on online platforms, the researcher qualitatively establishes the social media as an extension of the street mob.
