Social media, duress and the Malian conflict

This article examines the relationship between social media usage and duress in Mali, focusing on Twitter, TikTok, and WhatsApp. The violent conditions Malians face influence online discourse, with each platform having distinct dynamics. We address how Malians have responded to the country’s conflict since 2012 by looking at the discussion, embodiment, and expression of the conflict by various actors. Online social manifestations parallel long-existing narratives on war and old contestations while reflecting the changing context of the war’s actors and hardships. Violence is hence recursive. Focusing on duress leads us to argue that Malians’ use of social media contributes to the normalization of hardship due to prolonged war. Our multiplatform ethnographic and computational research illustrates that normalization takes on different forms—polarization, frustration, discrimination, and a search for economic alternatives—depending on the user demographics of the social media platforms.