Contribution short abstract:

Central Mali and cross-border areas in Burkina Faso experience violent conflicts that are often marked by high immediate coverage and short life in the global news cycle. Digital media enable communities to build fragmented archives, which shape both the memory and interpretation of such events.

Contribution long abstract:

The ongoing and expanding conflict in the Sahel takes place in an era of mass access to digital media, which enable both the timely local coverage of events and their dissemination as raw information, statements and commentaries to the outside world. In this regard, portable devices serve the need to inform, communicate as well as construct influential narratives and opinionated arguments around the events. The spread of inter-community conflict and violence has also significantly reshaped the documentation process over the years. In effect, parallel records compete now to define the “truth” and (re)assign the roles of “victim” and “perpetrator” in each episode. In the way armed groups dispute the monopoly of violence to national armies, community-based information channels regularly contest reports published by state media and even international agencies. These parallel archives are regularly deployed in the public debate on guilt and innocence, especially following successive highly publicized massacres, reprisals and other outbursts of interethnic strife. Focusing on the record-keeping of Tabilal Pulaaku (Fulani umbrella civil-society organization) and Dan Na Ambassagou (Dogon militia and advocacy group) on events in Central Mali and border areas in Burkina Faso, we will explore the dynamics of “documentary” antagonism and its use in shaping and influencing public opinion durably at home and abroad. How do these and other local organizations use their records to build a community-based memory of the conflict? What can we learn from these disparate yet structured archives about the perception of a given conflict and a way out of it?