Contemporary social movements and Violence: Situating digital technologies and discursive exchanges between.

New social movements (NSM) research have severally nuanced the political and social conditions that expedite the disintegration of social movements, and their consequent violence. Social and political opportunities for violence, for instance, lend credence to notions about relationship between levels of economic inequality and the diffusion of political violence. Certain actors also leverage opportunities offered by community support in perpetuating invidious actions which undermine community-based social movements. Furthermore, the wave of digital transformation that greeted the 21st century precipitates changing dynamics of collective action and how social movements operate. Social media platforms, especially those popular within the landscape of web communication are found to play a central role in the process of ‘identity construction’. The collective identities shared by contemporary social movements extend beyond the focus of traditional movements, given the shared ideologies which are discursively exchanged through the aid of social media.

Moreover, these exchanges are not devoid of some forms of violence. This further suggests notions about digitally-mediated protest violence. While ongoing studies submit remarkable findings about social movements and violence, including the role of social media as engaged by social movements in communicating shared ideologies and in mobilising support, among others, inviting further research are the dynamics of exchanges between social movements (the demand side) and governments (the response side) which ignite and steer violent incidences, as mediated by digital technologies. This study, through the lens of digitally-mediated mobility or otherwise, the intermediation of online and offline spaces, seeks to investigate the roles of digital technologies in (1) steering protest violence and in (2) mediating discursive opportunities between parties. It studies two main protests that occurred in West Africa in 2020 – Nigeria’s #ENDSARS and Liberia’s #RapeNationalEmergency. It is hoped that this study will contribute to growing knowledge on New Social Movements (NSM) and protest violence.