COLLOQUE INTERNATIONALMEDIATISATION, MOBILITES ET LES MESURES DE « GATEKEEPING » DANS UN CONTEXTE D’INSECURITE AU SAHEL

Bojsen, H. (Arrangør)

Institut for Kommunikation og Humanistisk Videnskab

Aktivitet: Deltagelse i eller arrangering af en begivenhed › Organisation og deltagelse i konference

Beskrivelse

International conference on Mediatisation and Gatekeeping in a Context of Insecruity in West Africa

Periode	15 sep. 2022 → 16 sep. 2022
Begivenhedstype	Konference
Placering	Ouagadougou, Burkina FasoVis på kort
Grad af anerkendelse	International

Dokumenter og Links

The insecurity currently weighing on Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger is often described as caused exclusively by armed groups, at times called terrorist or jihadist groups, which have carried out a series of attacks against civilians as well as national and international armed forces. But historically as well as currently, violence in the Sahel is not the prerogative of insurgent groups. Across the Sahel, violence against civilians has also been committed by a range of actors including national armies, militias, bandits and local defense groups, as well as external actors (foreign troops, private companies). In other words, the idea that the national state possesses the monopoly of legitimate violence has largely been debunked in the Sahel. The spate of insecurity currently unfolding in the Sahel has worsened an already precarious situation as far as human development is concerned. In particular, increasing insecurity has been a primary driver lately, of significant intra-and international migration within and beyond the Sahel. UNHCR, the United Nations’ Refugee Agency, recently reported for instance that the conflict in Sahel ‘has forced more than 2.5 million people to flee their homes in the last decade’ (UNHCR, 2022). This significant displacement of people has further compounded the Sahel’s role in illegal migration to Europe given that the region is a ‘key corridor and departure point for those trying to reach Europe, often at extreme personal risk’ (Erol Yayboke & Rakan Aboneaaj, 2020). The emergence of several centers of armed power involving both state and non-state actors and the precarious mobility of persons both legally and illegally within and across the Sahel are all taking place in a context of rapidly transforming communication ecologies. Like elsewhere across sub-Saharan Africa, digital media/technologies- especially the proliferation of social media such as WhatsApp and Facebook, have emerged as major drivers of transformations in the nature of private and public communication practices. Parallel to the loss of the state’s monopoly over legitimate use of violence highlighted above, the increasing proliferation of social media in the Sahel has challenged the monopoly of mainstream news media to distribute information of public relevance in the region. The plurality of voices in the public sphere made possible by the proliferation of digital/social media has also led to widespread circulation of wrong or misleading information and a coordinated instrumentalization of social media by both state and non-state actors in order to threaten critics, including media workers and to manipulate national and international public opinion. Such practices have brought to the fore once more, the important roles that mainstream news media must play as ‘gatekeepers’ of information to professionally vet what the public consumes as news and information. Inherent in the idea of ‘gatekeeping’ as originally discussed by Kurt Lewin (1947) is the passage of information, objects or persons through ‘gates’ that are controlled by relevant contextual actors. The increasing forced, voluntary legal and illegal mobilities of people within across the Sahel both affect and are affected by changing practices of circulation. They involve complex practices of vetting news and information in the region in a context marked by armed conflicts. This suggests that the situation in the Sahel may currently provide a useful lens to examine through multidisciplinary perspectives, gatekeeping practices as concerns mobilities of persons and mediations of news and information in situations of armed conflict. In light of the above, this two-day conference aims to bring together scholars, media practitioners and NGO activists working in the domain of migration, journalism and media in the Sahel or related contexts to examine gatekeeping practices around mobilities of persons and processes of mediations of news and information in situations characterized by armed conflict and increasing transformations of communication ecologies. We are particularly interested in the constructions, negotiations, adaptation and or circumventions of gatekeeping practices in formal and informal contexts and as it relates to mobilities/circulations people and information in contexts of conflicts. Potential Contributions We are therefore soliciting comparative or single country contributions that will seek to address any of the following key questions theoretically and/ or empirically: 1. How do media workers and other relevant social actors/groups in the Sahel retrieve, verify and distribute information about migration and insecurity in the region? What challenges are they facing and how can we theorize both these challenges and their adaptive practices? In particular, in what ways do these adaptive practices enrich, challenge and expand conventional understandings of gatekeeping practices in media, journalism and communication studies? Broadly, which filters of inclusion and exclusion are emerging as concerns public discussions of migration and conflicts in the Sahel and what are the implications of these filtering patterns for public policy and democratic debates? 2. How is the distinctive orality of African communication ecologies fostered, changed and challenged through digitally mediated communication practices centered on discussions of insecurity and migration in the Sahel? 3. How are formal and informal gatekeeping practices related to mobilities of persons within and beyond Sahel changing and what do such new patterns mean for our understanding of gatekeeping as seen from the lens of migration studies? 4. What are the challenges in studying gatekeeping practices around mobilities and mediations of conflict and how can these be overcome in ways that do not endanger the integrity of the research process? 5. What theoretical synergies are emerging from the Sahel with regards to expanding multidisciplinary understandings and relevance of gatekeeping as a central perspective to examine mobilities and circulation of persons and information in contexts of conflicts?

Relateret indhold

Aktiviteter
Mis/Mal/Disinformation and (In)Security:
Aktivitet: Deltagelse i eller arrangering af en begivenhed › Organisation og deltagelse i konference

Publikationer
Sécurité d'en bas au Burkina Faso Koglweogo, gardiens de la brousse, gardiens de la société ?
Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskrift › Tidsskriftartikel › Forskning › peer review
Médiatisation et pratiques de « gate-keeping » dans un contexte d’insécurité: Le cas des animateurs des radios communautaires au Sahel
Publikation: Konferencebidrag › Paper › Forskning › peer review
Enquête anthropologique et documentation visuelle sur la sécurité chez les Koglweogo au Burkina Faso
Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskrift › Tidsskriftartikel › Forskning › peer review

COLLOQUE INTERNATIONALMEDIATISATION, MOBILITES ET LES MESURES DE « GATEKEEPING » DANS UN CONTEXTE D’INSECURITE AU SAHEL

Beskrivelse

Dokumenter og Links

Relateret indhold

Aktiviteter

Mis/Mal/Disinformation and (In)Security:

Publikationer

Sécurité d'en bas au Burkina Faso Koglweogo, gardiens de la brousse, gardiens de la société ?

Médiatisation et pratiques de « gate-keeping » dans un contexte d’insécurité: Le cas des animateurs des radios communautaires au Sahel

Enquête anthropologique et documentation visuelle sur la sécurité chez les Koglweogo au Burkina Faso