Social Media and Linguistic Affirmation in Central Africa.

• Main Author: Rivron, Vassili
• Other Authors: Management of dynamic networks and services (MADYNES), Inria Nancy - Grand Est, Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (Inria)-Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (Inria)-Department of Networks, Systems and Services (LORIA - NSS), Laboratoire Lorrain de Recherche en Informatique et ses Applications (LORIA), Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (Inria)-Université de Lorraine (UL)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (Inria)-Université de Lorraine (UL)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Laboratoire Lorrain de Recherche en Informatique et ses Applications (LORIA), Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (Inria)-Université de Lorraine (UL)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université de Lorraine (UL)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), UNESCO / IFAP
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2014
• Subjects: Facebook; social media; ethnicity; writing; cultural heritage; diasporas; Central Africa; Cameroon; Gabon; Equatorial Guinea; [SHS]Humanities and Social Sciences; [SHS.ANTHRO-SE]Humanities and Social Sciences/Social Anthropology and ethnology; [SHS.INFO]Humanities and Social Sciences/Library and information sciences; [SHS.LANGUE]Humanities and Social Sciences/Linguistics; [SHS.MUSIQ]Humanities and Social Sciences/Musicology and performing arts; Yakutsk
• Online Access: https://hal.inria.fr/hal-01245420; https://hal.inria.fr/hal-01245420/document; https://hal.inria.fr/hal-01245420/file/RIVRON_Conf.Yakustk%3AUNESCO.pdf

International audience The success of social media among Africans and African diasporas have led to the creation of " Facebook groups " identified as ethnic groups. These networks can gather, among the five groups included in this study, up to 8,000 participants each.These spaces of community exchanges allow interesting observations on the preservation of linguistic diversity in the era of digital globalization, and on the mutations of ethnicity. On one hand, we are witnessing the " spontaneous " encoding of languages that were not usually written, contributing to their current writing use, to the transmission of this competence and literary heritage, to its unification and homogenization. On the other hand, these new linguistic registers cause profound changes in the status of these languages and in the organization of the associated cultural groups: the creation of a public space (which partially excludes other national languages) where diaspora members play a central role; the weaving of supra-national links with former parent groups in neighboring countries (reinvestment of neglected ethnonyms, rewriting of genealogies, reaffirmation of unifying origin myths);the projects of physical meetings, publishing policies, cultural festivals, supra-national political parties…