Online Radicalisation and Africa’s Youth: Implications for Peacebuilding Programmes

Abstract

This chapter is situated within the broader context of issue attention dynamics and the nature of humanitarian reporting and advocacy. Through this prism, the chapter examines concepts that have emerged in the study of international reporting of humanitarian crises, such as The CNN Effect, The Al Jazeera Effect, Embedded Journalism, The Twitter Effect and Facebook Revolution. This study explores the risk of radicalization and online extremism among African youth and its implication for peace education. It investigates the nexus between the digital media and youth radicalism from an interdisciplinary framework and offers an informed analysis and examination on the nature of radicalism, the role of media in promoting youth extremism. Key informants interviews are conducted with 65 youth leaders from the Africa Network for Population and Development to explore the extent of risk, contrary messaging exposed to and the potential consequences on the receiver. Analyses show that media attention to humanitarian crisis tends to be episodic and deficient in galvanizing political action for the prolonged humanitarian crisis and oversimplify root causes of conflicts. Findings confirm that African youth are exposed to different negative messages ranging from hate messaging to different individuals and institutions, necessary political information and religious extremist ideologies.