Digital dimensions of conflict: analyzing Malian conflict and violence through social media and mixed-methods approach

Since 2012, conflicts accompanied by escalating violence have spread across the Sahel region, making it one of the most violent areas in the world. It is perhaps no coincidence that 2012 also marks the period when social media began to gain significant traction in the Sahel. In this paper we explore how conflict narratives are shaped on Malian Twitter. Mali is one of the core areas of Sahelian conflicts. The paper uses a dataset of the Malian Twittersphere that was published in 2023. The approach combines computational methods (NLP) and ethnographic analysis. This method helps to read the big data set in a specific context and a socio-politically informed manner. The conclusions show that Twitter has a tendentious conflict discourse, that centers on (inter)national politics and generally supports the government. It is grounded in the real conflict events on the ground, but also relates to international discussions.