UJKZ_FluOnt2023 - Fluid Ontologies of Contestation. Social media, anti-government protest and transnational decolonization movements in Burkina Faso

“Fluid Ontologies of Contestation” studies how contemporary political contestation is co-constituted by online and offline processes of mobilization. It focuses on two key cases in Burkina Faso: the 2014 revolutionary uprisings against then-President Blaise Compaoré and the ongoing calls for decolonization, notably from France, in the context of the Sahel crisis. The interdisciplinary project combines social science and computer science methodologies to study the role of social media networks in collective movements that challenge established power relations on the national and transnational level. The project’s relevance lies in exploring contemporary fluid topographies of contestation across virtual and physical spaces. As various analysts have shown, contemporary social and political movements intertwine online and offline mobilization techniques to the point where each is co-constituted by the other (Castells 2015; Sebeelo 2021). The boundaries of social and political movements are no longer geographical and its participants and antagonists are spread across the globe. Analyzing them thus demands a radically relational perspective that links different medialities, sites, political struggles, inequalities and frustrations, and ideologies in the making. The project, developed in close collaboration between the ACC Ouagadougou and the Cluster in Bayreuth, aims at theorizing contestation from within the specific context of Burkina Faso while at the same time highlighting the fluid and porous boundaries of that context. Finally, we seek to explore the potential of the Cluster’s concept of “fluid ontologies” beyond the realm of IT.