Third International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

In recent years, countries and the people around Africa have increasingly become more aware and absorbed in the new uses of digital technologies in movements for political transformation. In the case of Cameroon, Anglophone Cameroonians have explicitly been spurred on by their kinsmen in the diaspora, who have steered the use of these technologies to give more home-based Anglophone Cameroonians (specifically in the English-speaking, North West and South West provinces of the country) access to information, and an opportunity to agitate against their autocratic leaders, and voice out their hitherto unheard voices. What are the origins of the Anglophone problem in Cameroon, and how has this been expressed on social media? Are the recent acts of blocking the Internet for periods of up to three months all over Anglophone Cameroon by the state (LRC), a validation of social media in service to democracy in Cameroon, or has social media also been used as a tool for surveillance by autocrats on both sides of the aisle during the crises? The study explores how Anglophone Cameroonians (both at home and in the diaspora) use social media to discuss their identities as either for federalism with La Republique du Cameroun (LRC), or for secession from LRC, during the crises, that has since been labelled the Anglophone crises (August 2016 – present). What is the value of digital activism in the process of democratization in Cameroon? Are there successful practices in other parts of Africa (the Maghreb Arab Spring perhaps), that could be replicated in Cameroon? In studying, analysing, and evaluating digital activism (predominantly through discourse analysis), I determine how Cameroonian Anglophone netizens have used social media, and the technology that support them to identify themselves within the broader context of the Anglophone problem in Cameroon.