The rise of Mali's ‘videomen’ as cybercombatants in global crisis ecologies

Abstract

This article examines the geopolitical shifts in Mali following its rejection of western intervention and subsequent partnerships with Russia. Mali is used as a case-study to explore the role of digital connectivity within global crisis ecologies. It challenges the narrative attributing Mali's coup solely to external influences, emphasizing the agency of local actors and new digital practices. Focusing on the role of ‘videomen’ in disseminating the narratives of Yèrèwolo, Mali's foremost anti-French and pro-Russian political movement, it examines how these actors shape public perceptions of Mali's new military leaders and their international partners. Using an assemblage framework to analyse smartphones' affordances, the nuanced dynamics shaping political legitimacy are elucidated, emphasizing the performative nature of authority in the digital age. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and quantitative analysis of online content, the article highlights how smartphones empower users like videomen to influence political dynamics amid crisis and geopolitical tensions. By reconstructing past events and reclaiming patriotism, videomen strategically use the political transition to outcompete traditional media professionals. The study underscores the need for understanding how localized dynamics shape broader political developments and international relations, offering insights into similar trends in other west African nations facing military coups and increased Russian involvement.

Prologue

It is 19 November 2022. A few hundred people have gathered at the Modibo Keita Memorial in Bamako to commemorate the anniversary of the former president's violent arrest in 1968. The date also marks the anniversary of the founding in 2019 of Yèrèwolo Debout sur les Remparts, Mali's foremost anti-French and pro-Russian political movement, which has played a vital role in shoring up support for the current, post-coup military government. Yèrèwolo's commander-in-chief Adama Ben Diarra, also known as Ben le Cerveau [Ben the Brain], dressed in a traditional white cotton boubou and a black Muslim prayer cap, stands in front of the audience. They chant Mali's national anthem and pay tribute to Keita's legacy. Several ‘videomen’ equipped with smartphones are capturing the event for online audiences.

Later, pan-Africanist and social media personality Kémi Séba and Roland Bayala of the Coalition des Patriotes Africains du Burkina Faso (COPA—BF) join the celebrations, denouncing imperialism and calling for African liberation. Towards the end, Séba takes the stage. Dressed in a red shirt and wearing a heavy silver ring engraved with an icon representing the African continent, his fiery speech resonates with the crowd: ‘Down with imperialism’; ‘Down with France’; and ‘Long live the liberation of Mali’. Séba continues:

We are not going to accept those who do not respect Africans. They say there are too many Africans in Europe, but they don't mind stealing African raw materials. If they don't want Africans in Europe, we don't want them here either and we don't want our riches to be in their homelands … Africa for Africans and African resources for Africans …¹

As he ends his speech the crowd cheers: ‘Kémi, Kémi, Kémi!’. In an era of digital connectivity, the event demonstrates how the videomen are shaping the political authority² of Mali's post-2020 coup government, against a backdrop of protracted crisis and major geopolitical shifts in the country's international relations.

Introduction

After a decade of unsuccessful western-led security interventions, the military government that came to power in August 2020 was the first to reject European and international intervention actors, turning to Russia (and the Wagner Group)³ to forge its security partnerships. This was a move that was subsequently mirrored in other former French colonies—Guinea (in 2021), Burkina Faso (2022) and Niger (2023)—albeit with different internal drivers in each case. Mali thus serves as an exceptional case-study of geopolitical shifts which have resulted from a breaking of relations with a broad range of international liberal alliances, offering insights into the influence of digital connectivity. The decisions of Mali and its neighbouring states to sever ties with the West and turn to Russia to strengthen new claims to sovereignty and anti-imperialism has garnered geopolitical significance in the wake of the war in Ukraine.

In European policy circles, these recent developments are often attributed to the expanding scope of Russian (military, economic and diplomatic) engagements, including disinformation campaigns aimed at undermining western efforts and external military interventions.⁴ Russia, and the paramilitary Wagner Group in particular, are often blamed for increasing anti-French sentiment and giving public support to Mali's new military leaders by strategic use of social media to spread disinformation.⁵ A prevailing notion suggests that Russian-sponsored online news outlets and various diplomatic channels generate ‘meta-narratives’, thereby shaping public perceptions and collective memory.⁶ Russia's enhanced diplomatic efforts to bolster its partnerships with African states in its struggle for geopolitical influence are well documented.⁷ Yet this emphasis on the role of external actors pays insufficient attention to the agency of Mali's new political actors and how they participate in Mali's digital warfare. Our study therefore asks if the roles of Russia and Wagner may be overstated.

Emphasizing internal drivers, anthropologists and African studies scholars attribute Mali's predictable ‘pattern of coups d'état' and its search for new external partners to a rupture between Mali's political class (la classe politique) and ordinary citizens (la base).⁸ Despite substantial western donor support for democratic reforms since the 1990s,⁹ widespread corruption, lack of accountability and the political elite's unfulfilled promises of public service delivery for ordinary citizens have fuelled a crisis of political legitimacy.¹⁰ Accordingly, the new military leader's popular support is linked to the western-supported political class's long-term failure to deliver on promises of improving governance.¹¹ While these multiple dimensions of Mali's protracted crisis of political authority are well described, the increasing prominence of social media and mobile technology has, so far, attracted less scholarly attention.

To fill this knowledge gap, this article examines how social media and mobile technology shape the political legitimacy and image of Mali's new military leaders in a context of protracted crisis and geopolitical tensions. We argue that the agency of local actors, and the political context and logic of social media mobilization, are under-researched and poorly understood, particularly in the global South and especially as the roles of social media and new digital individuals are often lumped together with externally-driven disinformation campaigns. To make this claim, we focus on the emergence of videomen¹²—a new type of cybercombatants—that have come to play an increasingly important role in the Malian mediascape since 2020. Political movements like Yèrèwolo use videomen to curate content for internet-based channels. In turn, videomen play an outsized role in shaping public perceptions of Mali's new military leaders and their international partners, both within Mali and among the Malian diaspora.

Pointing to the need for a broader conceptual appreciation of the various constitutive effects that emerge as smartphone practices unfold in times of crisis, we engage with this special section's concept of global crisis ecologies. The introduction to the special section refers to how ‘[s]martphones are both embedded in and embed global crisis ecologies’ and how the very concept of these ecologies ‘goes beyond the local and draws in those transnational actors who have the capacity to remotely participate in crises at an unprecedented speed, audio-visuality and scalability’.¹³ Smartphone ‘affordances’ (notably portability and app proliferation), we show, influence online engagement and socio-political dynamics. By facilitating accelerated access to a growing online audience, videomen, in turn, become powerful actors themselves in the ‘global crisis ecologies’. Focusing on the agency of videomen and the way their use of smartphones legitimizes military state power, the article highlights the often-ignored importance of local actors' online practices, thereby adding a new, more nuanced and grounded perspective to the analysis of Russia's propaganda machine in Africa. Finally, the article displays an innovative mix of methods that can contribute to the study of the emerging field of smartphone technology in global crisis and conflict.

The article is structured as follows: the first section accounts for the analytical and methodological approach. After introducing the broader context of Mali's political crisis in the wake of new political movements, we look at how videomen emerged in Mali's evolving media landscape and have come to shape Malian post-coup politics. In the second section, we provide a contextualized analysis of the emergence of the Yèrèwolo movement, its ambitions and its ties to changing geopolitical security dynamics, and finally, how its most prominent videoman, Gandhi Malien, constructs and disseminates Yèrèwolo's narratives online.

Analysing digital warfare through the lens of global crisis ecologies

War has the capacity to turn the media into a public battlefield of legitimacy and consent. Up until the mid-2000s, the production of public opinion in wartime was mainly characterized by the broadcasting era where news organizations (both helped and hindered by militaries and states) would fabricate wars in ways tailored to their audiences.¹⁴ Furthermore, state powers were central fabricators and financers of (dis)information campaigns to influence popular perceptions of military actions. However, the emergence of Web 2.0 participative platforms and technologies severely challenged state or military attempts to control war coverage.¹⁵ The digital revolution allows anyone to produce and consume information, collapsing the boundaries between observers and participants, and in turn altering civilian–military relations.¹⁶ With the advent of digital mobile technology, citizens have become producers of content that both legitimizes and challenges warfare. While digital media can sometimes shore up popular protest against war crimes and human rights abuses,¹⁷ they can also normalize political violence, mobilizing entire populations as consumers and supporters of war.¹⁸ Studying conflict and crisis in the twenty-first century thus requires attention to the role of connectivity, including the spatial ubiquity and networked properties that frame digital strategies of war- and sense-making.¹⁹ Though most discussion regarding participative war has been related to the informational aspect of warfare, the concept of global crisis ecologies illustrates that the scope of digitally-mediated participation goes beyond the information domain.²⁰

To investigate the impact of smartphones on political authority figures in Mali's crisis, we view smartphones as ‘socio-technical assemblages’. The assemblage perspective,²¹ aligned with ‘new materialism’ in science and technology studies, underscores how smartphone design and functionality influence human/non-human interactions.²² This dynamic interplay between smartphones and users plays a constitutive role in shaping authority within global crisis ecologies. To unpack this relationship, we emphasize the interdependency between rulers, or holders of authority, and their audiences (the public). Authority, as distinct from power, relies on persuasion and various practices, such as personal charisma and justificatory discourses, to create the illusion of superiority and to garner popular support. As a socio-technical assemblage, smartphones—through apps and online connectivity—transform the interdependent relationship between political rulers and the public by facilitating unprecedented access to a growing online audience.

Examining how smartphones and users shape authority through digital practices within the assemblage framework, we employ the concept of ‘affordances’—the capabilities and constraints inherent in a technology which its users do not always realize.²³ For instance, facilitated by smartphone technology, digital platforms like Facebook structure and enable relationships between local and transnational actors within and outside Mali, encompassing political movements like Yèrèwolo as well as military leaders and external actors. This elucidates not only how translocal entanglements are mediated, but also how videomen frame them and use digital platforms to disseminate them. Moreover, smartphones provide new platforms for rewriting history—challenging established narratives to enable new leaders to position themselves as legitimate proponents of a new global order.

In summary, within the assemblage framework, affordances illuminate the interaction between technology users and smartphones in global crisis ecologies. This interaction underscores the agency of users, including videomen, in influencing political dynamics despite prevailing power structures. Within this framework, agency—the ability to act within a social context—emerges as central, highlighting the transformative potential of digital devices and user practices amid power imbalances.

Methodology and data gathering

By studying a single case of a real-life situation, we can conduct an in-depth examination and capture diverse practices, which is often not attainable when undertaking studies involving multiple cases or large statistical samples. To capture these diverse practices and processes, we employ a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods.

Our analysis draws on ethnographic fieldwork, quantitative analysis of conflict data, and online content and digital ethnography.²⁴ While we have studied and followed the long-term trajectory of Mali's crisis since 2012, the study mainly cites about 30 interviews with journalists, videomen, Yèrèwolo leaders, international security experts, academics working in the country and political actors, conducted during fieldwork in November 2022. In addition to interviews, we also engaged in participatory observation in Yèrèwolo public meetings and rallies in and around Bamako and Koulikoro, the latter of which is considered the Yèrèwolo's home ground.

The online data analysis is derived from the War Without Allies²⁵ research project quantitative dataset as well as digital ethnography of carefully selected Facebook groups, profiles and pages (see figure 1 for a visualization of the process).²⁶ We used data published by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) to compare physical protest data with the online activity level of one of Yèrèwolo's most important videomen, Gandhi Malien.²⁷ Due to the labour-intensive nature of Application Programming Interface (API) scraping, we focused on Facebook, the most frequently used social media platform in Mali. In early 2023, of Mali's 1.70 million social media users, an estimated 1.55 million were using Facebook.²⁸ Lastly, Facebook, by enabling the use of both human and non-human trolls, is described as the triumph of ‘like’ wars, which makes its content prone to digital warfare.²⁹ For ethical reasons, we focus only on publicly available Facebook posts.

Based on interviews with Yèrèwolo members and media actors, we selected videomen with Facebook pages and profiles related to Yèrèwolo and its members. The quantitative data set comprises 57,325 Facebook posts from January 2020 and March 2023, including posts from three key Facebook groups and twenty Facebook profiles and pages. Four different programming languages (R, Python, Excel and GitHub)³⁰ were employed for data analysis and visualization. We identified individuals and organizations mentioned in the three key Facebook groups, listing the most frequently mentioned names associated with each Facebook page/group. A netnography of the most-mentioned names with Facebook pages guided the qualitative selection of people/groups disseminating political content. We then analysed selected posts and followers of the videomen influencers. To compare videomen's Facebook activity to that of Yèrèwolo's members, we used tidyverse's ‘summarise’ function.³¹ To protect our sources, except for the publicly well-known Gandhi Malien, we anonymized videomen and paraphrased Facebook posts.

Mali's crisis context

The emergence of new political movements in Mali is to be understood in the context of a failed political class and of how it links to Mali's international relations and a shifting geopolitical order. Since the 1990s, the promotion of democracy and western liberal order has been a priority for Mali's external partners, not least France.³² As in many of its former colonies, France has maintained involvement in various public domains including security, culture, education and development, in which the relevant political institutions were modelled on the French system.³³

Since 2012, Mali has grappled with a multifaceted crisis marked by political instability, armed conflict and humanitarian challenges. The fallout from Libya's 2011 breakdown directly affected the Sahel region, sparking the fifth Tuareg rebellion in Mali's northern regions since its independence in 1960. In the capital, Bamako, the March 2012 coup d'état triggered a power vacuum and insecurity, pushing the country towards political and territorial collapse. The presence of competing armed groups, including jihadist factions, turned Mali into an international security concern. To address these challenges at the request of Mali's interim government in 2013, France played a significant role in counterterrorism operations, while the United Nations, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the European Union engaged in various efforts to stabilize the situation for over a decade.

France, which collaborated with the Malian authorities until 2022 and intervened militarily upon request in 2013, has since been widely criticized by the Malian public for contributing to the country's instability. While accusations against France for not assisting Mali's path to development are not new, there is a growing prominence of online and offline rumours and conspiracy theories about French-led international military misadventures, adding a new dimension to the anti-French discourse. As argued by Denis Tull, the critique of France and its international associates also encompasses Mali's political leaders, who are held responsible both for the crisis and for the facilitation of an internationalized government.³⁴ It is in this context that Yèrèwolo, drawing on Modibo Keita's ideological framework, brands itself as an anti-imperialist, pan-African, nationalist movement.

Yèrèwolo's commander-in-chief, ‘Ben le Cerveau’, is a pro-Russian, anti-French activist. Mimicking a ‘true’ resistance fighter, he often appears in Facebook posts wearing a grey robe and a twisted Che Guevara cap.³⁵ From its inception, Yèrèwolo's project was to break ties with the French-influenced political elite that had persisted since the 1990s, of which the government of Ibrahim Boubacar Keita (who was president between 2013 and 2020, and who is commonly referred to as IBK) was seen as a continuation. Since Ibrahim Boubacar Keita's first term in office, influential politicians who later became Yèrèwolo's founding members had been unofficially calling for France's departure from Mali. Against this background, Yèrèwolo attacked France and its counterterrorism operation, Barkhane, as well as its international security cooperation partners such as the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), and the European Takuba Task Force, which Yèrèwolo considers an extended arm of western imperialism in Mali. Yèrèwolo has successfully conveyed these messages to the public using videomen.

The emergence of digital individuals in Mali's war ecology

The number of internet and social media users in Mali has rapidly increased in parallel with the security crisis, enhancing particularly the younger generations' exposure to social media content in a context of political turmoil and public protests in Mali's urban centres.³⁶ Traditional media like national television and the more than 700 local radio stations have gained hundreds of thousands of followers online, enhancing their potential outreach by broadcasting to the public in their native languages.³⁷ This points to one of the key characteristics of a crisis ecology, where digital individuals with their handheld devices have displaced traditional broadcast media.³⁸

Since the arrival of the Wagner Group (known as ‘Russian trainers’) in Mali in December 2021³⁹ and the French military withdrawal, the subject matter of an accelerating number of social media postings aims at shaping how the war is perceived, experienced and legitimized, showing how new digital practices shape the crisis ecology and how Mali's war is portrayed and interpreted. Illustrative of heightened political tension between Mali and France, on 16 March 2022 the Haute Autorité de la Communication (HAC) suspended broadcasts from Mali by the French broadcasting companies France 24 and Radio France Internationale (RFI) from Mali due to their allegedly biased handling of information.⁴⁰ The suspension of these two French media companies allowed Russian state-owned media outlets like RT and Sputnik, banned in the EU, to expand in Africa.⁴¹ However, their impact in Mali can be nuanced.

Online activity has been complicated by false Facebook and Twitter accounts disseminating disinformation among the increasing numbers of internet users in the country.⁴² This, in turn, has fostered a new business economy of online revenue generation by social media platforms, allowing content providers to earn money in return for numbers of views and engagements.⁴³ This business has provided Malian youth with access to a new livelihood strategy—and upward social mobility—in a context otherwise characterized by unemployment and limited prospects. In this broader crisis ecology, videomen have emerged as new conflict actors in digital warfare.

The role of videomen in Mali's crisis ecology

We are in a world of social networks. When the videomen put something on social media, it spreads quickly. Everyone gets the information.⁴⁴

The emic term ‘videomen’ is used in Mali to describe individuals—often young, urban males—who have become increasingly popular and active on social media platforms. As new cybercombatants in the global crisis ecologies, videomen engage in manifold digital practices or ‘affordances’ enabled by smartphone technology, including filming, editing and transmitting online to various web TV services posted on social media platforms (such as Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, X, Telegram and Reddit). Videomen's practices also shape relationships between actors through these platforms. Most videomen are Facebook users and disseminate their own content through their public profiles. Others produce and sell video content to web editors and web TV channels.

If you need a video, you can go to them [videomen], and they'll produce it without even going to the field, and they give it to you on a USB drive.⁴⁵

The rise of videomen is an example of how digital individuals feed global crisis ecologies' data-saturated fields. In Mali, the videoman business is sustained by demand for media coverage of Mali's conflict zones, which have become almost inaccessible to the international media. This points to how smartphone technology is deeply embedded in how crises are portrayed and interpreted. One interviewee described how there exists a market by means which videomen sell their content to international media houses like Voice of America and the BBC—similar to the market which used to operate in the case of traditional local media.⁴⁶

For the record, all the images that come today from conflict zones, 90% do not come from journalists. Videomen sell and they're not looking for other things than making money.⁴⁷

Mali's transitional government has attempted to control what is published online. For example, the Maison de la Presse du Mali (the national federation of journalists and media organizations), has asked journalists to treat information ‘patriotically’.⁴⁸ This has given the federation the reputation of being a government-controlled department, rather than a body for ensuring ethics and fair treatment of information in the press. This leaves the videoman business prone to punishment, including suspension of websites by the authorities, in cases where the content they provide works against the military government's interests. Citing the cybercriminality law passed in December 2019,⁴⁹ the HAC has suspended some critical videomen's web channels—particularly in cases where they have sold content to the French media. However, this legal framework is applied on an ad hoc basis, since the sheer amount of content produced makes it impossible to regulate.⁵⁰ In addition to political rewards, according to professional journalists, prominent web TV channels pay their videomen higher rates for their content than would be paid by the ordinary press. This dynamic has fuelled web activism and the emergence of videomen as a new class of political actors. However due to inadequate legal regulations of social media, videomen are easily influenced by the new military government and its supporters. Furthermore, Mali's stringent cybercriminality law allows the HAC to reclassify legal offences as cybercrimes thereby increasing government control over these actors.

The role of videomen during the 2020 coup d'état

Mali's videomen gained prominence during the broad public protest against the government of Ibrahim Boubacar Keita in the run-up to the August 2020 coup d'état. As with other global protests against autocratic regimes, initially the videomen's role consisted of mobilizing participation in public through live transmission. Mali's videomen soon became the main communication channel for the political leaders of the protest movement, the Mouvement du 5 juin—Rassemblement des forces patriotiques (M5—RFP). The movement comprised numerous, diverse and sometimes opposing civil society organizations, religious leaders, political parties and groupings.

Yèrèwolo's commander-in-chief, Ben le Cerveau, sat on the strategic committee of M5—RFP, and he and his party members displayed Russian flags during public protests. This points to Ben's and Yèrèwolo's central role in the crisis ecology, as local actors producing pro-Russian narratives through new communication channels. M5—RFP recognized the potential to pressure the government to solve the national security crisis. They disseminated the view that Mali's insecurity stemmed from the failings of the state, allowing for western interference and the presence of foreign (particularly French) forces. Utilizing private TV and radio broadcasts transmitted on Facebook and YouTube, they advocated for a break with the increasingly unpopular western intervention and denounced the efforts made to manage the crisis by Ibrahim Boubacar Keita's regime.

Illustrating the importance of smartphones and social media in the construction of political authority, at the height of the protest M5—RFP's then-spokesperson, the incumbent Prime Minister (at time of writing) Choguel Maiga, held all his press conferences in front of videomen, who transmitted the movement's positions and decisions online. A radio station owner and videoman who has known Choguel for more than 25 years explained that all the leaders of M5—RFP use videomen.

Choguel, as the president of the strategic committee, spoke more than the others. Later, he realized that it's an effective communication channel, so he continues to use it.⁵¹

It was with M5—RFP that Gandhi Malien (perceived to be the appointed videoman of the influential imam Mahmoud Dicko, who heads another movement, the Coordination des Mouvements, Associations et Sympathisants), built his notoriety in Mali's digital media landscape. Comparing ACLED protest data to the online activity level of Gandhi Malien, figures 2 to 4 below confirm: 1) how Gandhi Malien was an important and active videoman during the 2020–2021 public protests; and 2) that he remains Yèrèwolo's most popular videoman at the present time, in terms of likes per post.⁵²

After the August 2020 coup, while not wanting to directly collaborate with the former political class and M5—RFP (which had become distorted by deep ideological divides), the military transitional authorities relied on the youth leaders of Yèrèwolo whose discourses resonated with public opinion. Simultaneously, the complex role of videomen in Mali's mediascape changed somewhat. Videomen became an institutionalized communication channel for the military leaders after 4 June 2021, when Choguel Maiga was appointed as prime minister of the transition. While the transitional leaders own the state-run media,⁵³ they continue to use social media to encourage the youth (who rarely follow traditional media, but overwhelmingly use social media) to spearhead the fight against western imperialism.

It's thanks to social media that I had the opportunity to travel with the prime minister across Mali during his 2020–2021 campaigns. During these outings, there was live coverage. The television was also doing its job. But unlike television, we go live, providing the possibility to follow events in their entirety. The new authorities have understood the importance of these media outlets because citizens are interested in them.⁵⁴

The above quote illustrates how, in some cases, videomen became instruments of the new regime; meanwhile, their influence and prominence have also enabled them to become influential actors. Equipped with smartphones, videomen create online platforms that connect new political actors with a public from whom they gain support, emphasizing the performative nature of authority now tied to smartphone affordances. The videomen's role in shaping public opinion about political authorities and events has had constitutive effects on post-coup politics and on how Mali's war becomes mediated online.

Figure 4, below, shows a peak in Gandhi Malien's activities in July 2022, coinciding with a burst of political and security-related events. On 3 July ECOWAS lifted financial sanctions on Mali, which was celebrated as a victory marking the reopening of the borders.⁵⁵ However, a week later tensions arose over the arrest at Bamako airport of 49 newly arrived Ivorian soldiers and ammunition.⁵⁶ The government of Mali claimed not to have been informed of their presence or mission in the country; their arrival was attributed to various possibilities, including a classified mission. Amid strained relations between Mali, Côte d'Ivoire and ECOWAS, videomen labelled the Ivorian soldiers ‘mercenaries’, alleging the aim behind their deployment was the destabilization of Mali's transitional regime. Subsequently, doubts arose about MINUSMA's ability to protect itself, raising public scepticism about the soldiers' true mission in Mali.

Disorder online and the economy of Mali's crisis ecology

A context where videomen have almost replaced the traditional media has created a sense of ‘disorder online’.⁵⁷

What's dangerous about videomen is that they operate individually. Videomen are paid in return for their favours; they don't have any legal status apart from being called a videoman, blogger, Facebook user, or activist. They choose their own names; they don't have a fixed location; they roam around and do their work. Now, those who have created web TVs, they have studios, they are stationary, and they are recognized; we can see them. But what laws do they operate under?⁵⁸

The lack of regulation and transparent editorial processes contribute to a fragmented media landscape, where the risk of mis-and disinformation is exacerbated by a ‘clickbait’ economy where revenue is generated by the number of engagements on web pages. The global crisis ecologies in which participative digital warfare takes place blur jurisdictional boundaries, making it increasingly difficult to regulate how a war is being fought and amplified online. Furthermore, social media is a breeding-ground for falsehoods. As one radio station owner stated, the communication produced is often not verified, which can easily lead to false information—for example, about the French presence in Mali. The following quote points to the potential of such information to mobilize:

This morning, someone sent me an audio saying that he saw a rally of about 40 disguised French soldiers on motorcycles leaving the border of Senegal for Mali. I call the gendarmerie post in Diboli [a town near the Mali–Senegal border] to verify, and the guy there tells me: ‘No. It is tourists who come at this time of the year. The Senegalese know them, the Malians know them. They have nothing to do with the French army.’⁵⁹

Here, the concept of affordances shows us how the capabilities and constraints of new smartphone technology—sharing videos (audiovisuality) in real time—can spread information at accelerated speed, whereby it feeds into various existing interpretations. In a context marked by geopolitical tensions, such interpretations can stir existing anti-French sentiments in an awakened online audience. Or, as in this example, the receiver may seek to verify and calm things down. Yet, the inherent potential of smartphone availability points to the contingent and non-linear nature of how digital content travels.

Yèrèwolo's political legitimacy and its ties to Mali military leaders

On 19 November 2019, Yèrèwolo Debout sur les Remparts launched, with the declared objective of defending Mali's sovereign interests. Yèrèwolo brings together a number of pro-Russian and socialist movements, including members of the anti-French branch of the Rassemblement pour le Mali (RPM), the former majority party in the National Assembly, whose members were among the first political actors to publicly denounce the French–Malian military cooperation. Yèrèwolo's powerful position can be grasped in the context of its current members' important roles as activists in different patriotic youth movements⁶⁰ in the lead-up to Mali's fourth coup d'état on 22 March 2012⁶¹—a catalyst for the 2012 national security crisis. The March 2012 coup enabled patriotic youth organizations and activists, like Ben, to enter the political landscape, and laid the groundwork for the utilization of online platforms. Seeking to revitalize Mali's political class and reclaim its former prominence, they have embraced Modibo Keita's socialist ideology, emphasizing sovereignty, pan-Africanism, decolonization and opposition to western imperialism.

Presenting itself as a political alternative to the former ruling class, which was held responsible for Mali's longstanding crises, Yèrèwolo rose to prominence after the 2020 coup through its dedicated fight against the French military presence in Mali, and subsequently against MINUSMA. Yèrèwolo views French President Emmanuel Macron's official withdrawal of the counterterrorism Operation Barkhane on 9 November 2022 as a victory upon which it has built its reputation. Its influence expanded after ECOWAS imposed sanctions in January 2022, through its support for Colonel Assimi Goita's transition and by supervising the military transition on how to prevent a repeat of the failures of past political leaders.

With Yèrèwolo's leader Ben being a member of the National Transitional Council (CNT—the interim legislative body established following the 2020 coup)⁶² and most Yèrèwolo members living close to the military transition leaders in Kati (Mali's key garrison town close to Bamako), the movement has both formal and informal access to key transition leaders. Conversely, the transition leaders have aligned themselves with Yèrèwolo's ideological orientation to strengthen their legitimacy in the fight against both the ‘occupying’ presence of overseas forces in Mali and the former political class.

Yèrèwolo's proximity to the transition leaders has at times given the impression that Yèrèwolo controls the transition, especially when the incumbent president Bah Ndaw was ousted in May 2021 in favour of Goita. This was a difficult period, during which the ties between Yèrèwolo and the transition strengthened. One interviewee who has known Yèrèwolo's members for years explained the relationship between Yèrèwolo, the transitional military government and videomen as a structure of three echelons, in which Yèrèwolo conveys the messages of the transitional authorities, and videomen in turn amplify Yèrèwolo's messages online:

Yèrèwolo is like the gendarmes of the transition [from military government to democratic elections]. All that is not going well, Yèrèwolo says it, and it gets transmitted online. All the messages … Yèrèwolo have conveyed, like the non-renewal of MINUSMA's mandate, the [transitional] authorities follow.⁶³

Despite challenges, such as pressure from ECOWAS and internal dissent, cooperation between Yèrèwolo and the transition intensified, resulting in a solidification of opposition to Operation Barkhane and calls to close MINUSMA. While both sides agreed on the need for foreign troops to leave Mali, they often disagree on the transition's direction, particularly with respect to the fight against corruption and to ensuring a fair system of justice for citizens. Tensions peaked between Ben and the transition leaders as the former continued to advocate for adherence to the transitional framework agreement to hold a presidential election in February 2024, with a view to leveraging the lifting of ECOWAS sanctions. His outspoken criticism of the transition on social media eventually led to his arrest in September 2023 on charges of ‘damaging the state's credibility’.⁶⁴ Here, we focus on how smartphone technology shapes Yèrèwolo's political legitimacy, and how the movement's members use social media to portray themselves as Mali's new protectors of justice.⁶⁵ As an interviewee explained:

Yèrèwolo uses the videomen's ‘fighting power’ to strengthen their position vis-à-vis the authorities of the republic. In turn, Yèrèwolo helps people to better understand the authorities and to better convey their messages within Mali.⁶⁶

Before we turn to the role of videomen in shaping Yèrèwolo's narrative structures, the next section shows how smartphones' affordances structure the dynamics between local, translocal and external actors—taking the form of a ‘connective war’.⁶⁷

Yèrèwolo's ties to Russia and the Wagner Group

The partnership with Russia was requested before the transition because of its importance. We are nationalists and grateful to all countries that respect us.⁶⁸

Ben le Cerveau has been accused of being a ‘Russian agent’, collaborating with the Malian intelligence service to infiltrate political movements, and is listed by the EU as one of five Malians subject to restrictive measures.⁶⁹ Ben's position as a member of the CNT has granted him favourable access to the Wagner Group, which is known to support the military junta's political strategy. Allegedly, Wagner's ‘back office’ has provided Ben with up to 50 million CFA francs (approximately €76,225).⁷⁰ Yèrèwolo has an important strategic impact on the transitional government's political strategy, revealing how Russia and the Wagner Group build and strengthen their relations to African allies.

Ben's connection to French-Beninese activist Kémi Séba links Yèrèwolo to the regime in Moscow.⁷¹ Séba, with over a million followers on Instagram and Facebook, along with his NGO, Urgences Panafricanistes, is a strategic weapon in Wagner's digital campaign to enhance Russia's influence in Africa.⁷²

After September 2020 Ben became connected to Kémi Séba and the Beninese activist Egountchi Behanzin the leader of Urgences Panafricanistes, who has been reported to have connections with Russia. Similar to [the Central African Republic], Wagner applies Alexandre Douguine's theories, which draw on conspiracy theories and are integrated into Ben's nationalist narrative.⁷³

The ‘Kémi project’ points to social media as a crucial battleground for great power rivalry, with Russian influence in West Africa accelerating after the annexation of Crimea and the war in Ukraine. Illustrating the actors' translocal entanglements, Séba has visited Mali multiple times since the 2020 coup to participate in Yèrèwolo-organized protests against western interventions and the ECOWAS sanctions. In November 2022, President Goïta invited Séba to Mali, where he—as portrayed in the prologue to this article—took part in Yèrèwolo's annual celebration declaring to his on- and offline listeners that Yèrèwolo is the revolutionary force behind Goïta—Africa's new constitutional reference point.⁷⁴ Finally, Yèrèwolo's regional outreach is evident in its promotion of coups in Mali's neighbouring nations of Burkina Faso (2022) and Niger (2023). Yèrèwolo stir popular anti-French sentiments with such claims as: ‘Mali needs Russia to help us out of the crisis, and Wagner is a part of the toolkit'.⁷⁵

Mali maintained a close bond with the Soviet Union (and later with Russia) following its independence in 1960. Russian ‘soft power’ was bolstered by Russian university scholarships for Malian students, fostering a favourable perception of the larger power among generations of Malian civil servants. Additionally, military training of Malian forces in Russia has persisted since independence, facilitating a strengthening of Mali–Russia military cooperation under the new military leadership. Drawing on this, to increase global outreach Russia also capitalizes on deep anticolonial sentiments among Mali's population to discredit France and the western security actors while establishing new economic, political and military alliances with Mali's new military leaders. Russia's growing influence is often seen as filling a vacuum left by the withdrawal of western powers' engagement.⁷⁶ But this perspective omits to explain how Russia and the Wagner Group are connected to a larger entanglement of local and translocal actors whose aims and practices shape global crisis ecologies. Drawing on Mali's longstanding cooperation with Russia, Yèrèwolo's members eulogize the Russia–Mali security collaboration in many political statements online. Remarkably, Ben and other Yèrèwolo members are not among the most active social media users. Instead, relations between the actors are mediated online by videomen—a mediation through which Yèrèwolo and the new military regime gain legitimacy.

Videomen as cyber griots

The nobles speak in front of the griots, who then convey their message to the people. It is through the words of the griots, their greatness is praised.⁷⁷

The data collected for this study between January 2020 and March 2023 shows that of a total of 57,325 posts, 4,869 posts were made by Yèrèwolo members, and 52,456 by videomen (see figures 5 and 6 below). The role of videomen illustrates how new digital practices reignite older forms of authority/power relations. To understand the function of videomen in the co-creation of authority (and, in turn, the creation of their own) in Mali's political culture, it is useful to compare the intermediary role of videomen to that of the griots.

In traditional Mandé culture, the griots belong to a caste of poets, musicians and storytellers held to be socially inferior to nobles.⁷⁸ They occupy a special place in terms of providing services like dance, music, recital of genealogies and praise of heroic deeds, and also, at times, conflict mediation and transmission of speeches. According to the cultural code, the griots–nobles relationship contains a linguistic division of labour which constrains nobles from speaking to crowds, making them dependent on griots to communicate in formal public contexts.⁷⁹ In ancient Mandé culture, when a war was announced, the king called upon the griots to galvanize the troops. The griots played the Janjo (the song of the brave) to the warriors, urging them to demonstrate willingness to defend their homeland in the battles they were preparing to fight. In the same vein, videomen use their resources to support the transitional authorities and to celebrate the magnificence of the Malian armed forces. Ultimately, they can push the authorities to action by stirring up or dramatizing situations and events—a powerful position stemming from their sense of patriotic vigilance.

The historical trajectories of the griots and their culturally embedded practices thus enable an understanding of the need for videomen as intermediaries. To establish authority as leaders, Yèrèwolo's members depend on trusted intermediaries to praise their powers; they pay these intermediaries in return for their favours. Through the assemblage lens we see the dynamic relationship between the actors: Yèrèwolo works as a griot for the transitional authorities, and using mobile technology and online platforms the videomen work as griots for Yèrèwolo, which in turn, co-constitutes the authority of the country's new leaders, supported by and in support of Russia. In global crisis ecologies, the power of the videomen is constituted through the online mediation of these relations where they gain followers, likes and comments, which, in turn, make them powerful actors in their own right. Next, we turn to how Gandhi Malien, who is dedicated to supporting the Malian transition, uses influencers and managers to curate support for Yèrèwolo.

Yèrèwolo's performance of authority on Gandhi Malien's Facebook channel

For the in-depth textual analysis component of our research we selected one videoman, Gandhi Malien, who besides being the most popular in terms of receiving most likes, continues to be the most important broadcaster of Yèrèwolo's messages, with more than 865,000 followers on Facebook at March 2023. The quantitative text analysis includes tokenization—a natural language processing technique.⁸⁰ Based on the large dataset, we selected 18 ‘tokens’ (words, names, organizations, countries, and so on) from Gandhi Malien's Facebook page to show how ‘coup politics’ are discussed on this page. The CNT appears as the most frequent token in relation to the transition.

The discourse analysis of political dialogues with Yèrèwolo members on Gandhi Malien's Facebook page shows how the movement frames its political project.⁸¹ In terms of qualitative substance, in the online broadcasting of Yèrèwolo's activities and political dialogues on Gandhi Malien TV, the revisiting of historical events is a key narrative. In the videomen's prevailing narratives of the rise of Mali's army, they glorify Mali's precolonial political organization and recall the heroic deeds of those who resisted French colonial penetration.

The national army's more recent shortcomings in combating terrorists and Tuareg secessionists are often ascribed by videomen to the betrayal of political elites from the democratic era, whom they accuse of dismantling military arsenals and eroding troop morale through the politicization of the military institution. (Corrupt military personnel are promoted while ‘brave’ soldiers are downgraded to subordinate positions within the military command structure.) This reflects how war is perceived, won and lost, legitimized, declared, hidden and made visible for different actors, for different ends, and is entangled with remembering and forgetting. In global crisis ecologies, historical nodes blend in and relate to re-emerging geopolitical orders. This is manifested in long video posts, the recordings of which were made during our period of fieldwork, at the celebration of Yèrèwolo's third anniversary marking the annual commemorialization of Modibo Keita's arrest. Videomen film the ceremony, framing Yèrèwolo's political ideology as a continuation of Modibo Keita's disrupted ideological framework, following the 1968 coup led by Moussa Traoré, who governed for 23 years until being overthrown in 1991. Yèrèwolo contends that Traoré's ties with France resulted in the assassination of political opponents, economic decline, the adoption of the CFA franc in 1984, the imposition of structural adjustment policies by international financial institutions, and diminished national unity and pan-African values.

As assemblage theory emphasizes, to gain resonance these narratives must speak to historically situated events and experiences felt by Malians themselves—creating new relational ontologies which enable new hyper-historical narratives about the war. After ten years of French-led western interventionism in Mali, in the course of which the security situation has only deteriorated further, anti-French sentiments and an impatience to see an alternative path grew within Mali's urban population, creating resonance for Yèrèwolo's online-mediated propaganda.

The departure of western security partners and the turn to Russia

Today, MINUSMA is the path enemies can take to defeat Mali. That is why we demand the outright withdrawal of MINUSMA from Mali.⁸²

In an online interview with Gandhi Malien TV, Ben le Cerveau pays tribute to ‘the departure of MINUSMA’, reflecting how war events are made to fit Yèrèwolo's anti-western agenda. The interview received more than a hundred thousand views and 7,500 likes.⁸³ To recast history, Yèrèwolo attacked a cornerstone in MINUSMA's mandate, i.e. the Algiers Peace Agreement, signed in 2015:

The Ibrahim Boubacar Keita regime has been consumed by the Algiers Agreement, an inappropriate agreement. To us, the Algiers Agreement is a betrayal of our country. For an agreement to be considered an agreement, both parties must agree on it.⁸⁴

The Algiers agreement was signed by Tuareg separatist and pro-government militias, together with the Ibrahim Boubacar Keita government. While the regime did little to implement it, the agreement has been widely viewed in Mali as an imposition on the part of the international community (most notably France and Algeria). We should recall here that Yèrèwolo members were part of the early protest movements mobilizing against the signing of the agreement, which they considered an attack on Mali's unity pushed through by Mali's international, French-led, security partners.⁸⁵ This shows how events during earlier phases of the war contributed to mistrust in French engagement (for example, conspiracy theories that France supports the Coalition des Mouvements de l';Azawad (CMA) a political and military alliance of Tuareg and Arab rebel groups in Mali, which they accuse of being ‘disguised’ terrorist groups, and the narrative of the Kidal region in the north as a breeding-ground for French-supported terrorism used by the transitional government to mobilize anti-French sentiments in the population).⁸⁶ This mediated understanding of events blends facts, rumours and personal observations, highlighting how Yèrèwolo's political ambitions align with existing grievances. They resonate with the experiences of many Malians who perceive that western security partners have often supported injustices in the war. These narratives shape constitutive elements in the crisis ecology by framing new perceptions of the war and its conduct.

In Ben's view, in addition to expelling Mali's western security partners, reclaiming national sovereignty requires support from an alternative great power such as Russia, whose socialist history resonates strongly with Mali's upcoming leaders' patriotic sentiments. In the online interview with Gandhi Malien, Ben notes his great satisfaction with Mali–Russia military cooperation:

The mosquito cannot make the insecticide. The same France that is at the origin of our crisis cannot be the solution. Thanks to the Mali–Russia cooperation, every day our army is growing in strength and achieving successes over our enemies.⁸⁷

Ben's praise for Mali–Russia security cooperation reflects Yèrèwolo's political doctrine of pan-Africanism as a guarantee to regain sovereignty. The quest for sovereignty must be supported actively by international actors who, in Yèrèwolo's view, respect Malian interests and can influence geopolitics and UN decision-making. Of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, Yèrèwolo considers Russia the only one capable of providing military means and diplomatically defending Mali's crisis resolution.⁸⁸ The capabilities of Mali's newly-acquired weapons (drones, light armoured vehicles, military aircraft and anti-aircraft defence systems of Russian, Turkish, Iranian and Chinese origin) are subject to unprecedented comments by videomen, who, by amplifying the achievements of military authorities, can counter public criticism and neutralize political opposition. Finally, in Ben's interview with Gandhi Malian, he celebrates Mali as the starting-point of a new world order, defying the power of the US while consolidating the power of China and Russia—should other countries be inspired.⁸⁹ So, assembling new narrative structures in the crisis ecology is not just about the present. Media, memory and history exist in a new nexus of unprecedented complexity and scale, framing participation and capturing attention.

Conclusion

In this article, we challenge the prevailing narrative attributing Mali's 2020 and 2021 coups d'état solely to external influences, notably Russia. We emphasize the role of local actors and new digital practices in shaping support for the new military authorities and their vision for a new world order. To examine the role of smartphone technology in shaping political legitimacy, we have focused on the role of videomen in disseminating the narratives of Yèrèwolo, Mali's prominent anti-French and pro-Russian political movement, that has been instrumental in garnering popular support for the post-coup military government by stirring anticolonial feelings among the population. By providing new political authorities with accelerated access to a growing online audience, videomen become powerful actors themselves in global crisis ecologies. At the core of this understanding lies the concept of agency, defined as the ability to navigate within a social context through diverse practices. Despite power imbalances, smartphones empower users to influence political dynamics amid crisis and geopolitical tensions.

Through our examination of smartphone technology's impact, particularly the role of videomen in promoting Yèrèwolo's pro-Russian narratives, we highlight the nuanced dynamics shaping political legitimacy. Using the assemblage framework to analyse the impact of smartphones points to how deep-seated cultural practices merge with new digital engagements underscoring the performative nature of authority in the digital age. Specifically, the affordance concept highlights how livestreaming and content creation help videomen reach new online audiences enabling political actors to gain public support. Smartphones also create new platforms for rewriting history, disrupting established narratives and truths. By reconstructing past and contemporary events to reclaim patriotism, videomen assert their space in the media landscape to take part in the media war against former western allies that have turned enemies in the post-coup period. In this war, they strategically use the 2020 political transition, efforts to reclaim national unity, and the fight against western actors to outcompete traditional media professionals.

Our study, however, does not call for a focus on local actors and dynamics only. The concept of global crisis ecologies draws attention to transnational actors remotely participating in crises at an unprecedented speed, audiovisuality and scalability. As we show, smartphone affordances influence relations between local and external actors within and outside Mali, forming the dynamics of a ‘connective war’.

Mali's case-study reveals geopolitical shifts following the rejection of western interventions, with Mali and other nations forging new partnerships with external actors like Russia. Our analysis highlights how everyday use of smartphones affects the crafting of new authority figures elucidating the role of localized dynamics in shaping broader political developments and international relations. Understanding these dynamics in Mali offers insights into similar trends in other West African nations facing military coups and increased Russian involvement.

In future engagements, western policy-makers must grasp the nuanced influence of localized dynamics in shaping Russia's involvement in Africa. African actors pursue their own agendas and alliances and should not be treated as mere stakes in the West's rivalry with Russia, but as independent actors with their own agency.

Footnotes

Author notes