Short Abstract

This panel examines social media discourse practices and online community communication strategies across Pan-African contexts and the diaspora. We bring together pragmatic and linguistic analyses of how Africans negotiate meaning, identity, and belonging on Twitter/X, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook.

Long Abstract

Social media platforms have become critical spaces for African expression, activism, and community formation. Yet despite growing scholarship on African digital cultures (Willems & Mano 2017; Yeku 2022), how Africans communicate on these platforms—the linguistic practices, pragmatic strategies, and discourse dynamics through which they construct identity, negotiate power, and build community—remains underexplored in African Studies.

This panel brings together scholars examining social media discourse practices across the African continent and diaspora, drawing on pragmatic and linguistic approaches to digital communication (Zappavigna & Martin 2018). We build on research documenting Nigerian Twitter activism (Wonneberger et al. 2020), South African youth identity construction online (Machirori 2023), and code-switching practices in multilingual African digital spaces to foreground the sophisticated communicative strategies Africans deploy on platforms including Twitter/X, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook.

We invite papers addressing code-switching and multilingual practices in online communities; identity performance and authenticity claims in digital discourse; power dynamics and agency in political communication; strategies for community-building and belonging across borders; resistance to colonial framings and counter-narratives; gendered and intersectional communication practices; meme culture and creative language use; diaspora-homeland digital dialogues.

We welcome papers with geographic and linguistic specificity—whether focused on particular African regions, language communities, platforms, or movements—as well as comparative Pan-African approaches. By centering how Africans communicate online through pragmatic and discourse-analytic lenses, this panel advances understanding of contemporary African digital cultures while contributing methodological insights to digital media scholarship.

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