Abstract
The internet revolution has opened the floodgates for unrestricted freedom of speech for the downtrodden mostly in the developing economies of the world while state-controlled radio and television broadcast has suffered the fate of heavy-handed government censorship in Africa by being intolerant to voices of dissent. Consequently, social media has become the alternative outlet of publishing uncensored messages to the rest of the world using a VPN or the internet. The case of Anglophone Cameroonians in West Africa constitutes the focus of this study. In the attempt to protest yearlong marginalization by the central government of Cameroon, the Anglophone Cameroonians of the southern part have been sharing gory pictures of police brutality on them for daring to raise a voice of dissent to the 35 years old government of President Paul Biya. They have found the internet as the pathway to trumpet their 56 years old marginalization, inequalities, arrests, and detention to the rest of the world. This chapter content analyzes two significant events in the struggle for political independence by the Anglophone Cameroonians from two critical social media portals dedicated to the struggle: Baretta Facebook images and Southern Cameroon Television (SCTV) YouTube video posts of September 22 and October 1, 2018.
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Langmia, K. (2019). Confronting the Lion with Bare Hands: Social Media and the Anglophone Cameroonian Protest. In: Ngwainmbi, E. (eds) Media in the Global Context. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26450-5_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26450-5_5
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