Paper short abstract:

Our article sets out to analyze the effects of digital technology on users of Facebook, using Ball-Rokeach & DeFleur's theory of media dependency (1976) in a socio-anthropological existentialism to elucidate the political participation of actors located outside the circles of power.

Paper long abstract:

Boyadjian et al, (2017) observe the possibility of categorizing Internet users through the language register employed in digital content. In other words, via terms such as "vehicule" or "car" in a sentence, the Internet users social origine identification can be envisaged, if only approximately. By focusing on the popular uprising that led to the overthrow of Blaise COMPAORE's regime, our article aims to highlight the psychosociological effects of the media, using Ball-Rokeach & DeFleur's media dependency theory (1976) to explore the political socio-anthropological existentialism of political protest actors.

Our interest in the model lies in the theoretical possibility for the study of media effects on an audience. Indeed, we can postulate that if popular mobilization in Burkina Faso was strong in 2014, it is because a digital dependency predestined protesters against Blaise COMPAORE's regime to connect with each other. In this prism, social networks served as vectors for important information dissemination relating to the political powers'actions of the time, so that the audience found itself under its influence from a cognitive, affective and/or behavioral level(s). The theory in no way deals with the effects of the media in a psychopathological sense through "dependency", but aims to show firstly an information usefullness for the individual, then to analyze attitudes, feelings linked to certain values and then the active or inactive role of the individual with regard to a piece of information. Although aimed at traditional media, it is applicable to alternative media, which provide access to a diversity of information sources.