Mirjam de Bruijn awarded subsidy for project on digital warfare in the Sahel

Mirjam de Bruijn has been awarded subsidy for a project called 'Digital warfare in the Sahel: Popular networks of war and Cultural Violence'. The subsidy has been awarded in the framework of the Open Competition NWO Social Sciences and Humanities of the Dutch Research Council.

Violent conflict is on the increase in the Sahel since 2012, coinciding with the increased use of social media in the region. The organisation of networks and their information flows are changing, and this project studies the conflict as a digitally and physically networked one. Cultural violence - the legitimation of violence - spreads through (trans)regional networks, and discursive and ‘real’ warfare become entangled. This interdisciplinary study will focus on (trans)national networks, combining historical-ethnographic and computational methods to understand the ‘workings’ of networked conflict. The project, which has links to the Decoding Digital Media in African Regions of Conflict (DDMAC) project, warns of possible increases in ethnic violence, resulting from digital media uses.