Azawads Facebook Warriors

In January 2012, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), a group dominated by members of the Tuareg ethnic group, launched a military uprising seeking the independence of Malis vast but sparsely populated north as the democratic, secular nation-state of Azawad. Azawads Facebook Warriors tells the extraordinary story of a small group of social media activists who sought to broadcast the MNLAs cause to the world. Azawads Facebook Warriors offers a groundbreaking new study of the MNLAs use of social media through the original analysis of more than 8,000 pro-MNLA Facebook posts published over a four-year period and interviews with key architects of the MNLAs media strategy. The book further places the MNLAs social media activism in context through a nuanced treatment of northern Malis history and an unparalleled blow-by-blow account of the MNLAs role in the Malian civil war from 2012 through 2015. More broadly, through the case study of the MNLA, the book argues that studying rebel social media communications, a field that has until now unfortunately received scant scholarly attention, will prove an increasingly important tool in understanding rebel groups in coming years and decades.