Cryptopolitics

Hidden information, double meanings, double-crossing, and the constant processes of encoding and decoding messages have always been important techniques in negotiating social and political power dynamics. Yet these tools, “cryptopolitics,” are transformed when used within digital media. Focusing on African societies, Cryptopolitics brings together empirically grounded studies of digital media toconsider public culture, sociality, and power in all its forms, illustrating the analytical potential of cryptopolitics to elucidate intimate relationships, political protest, and economic strategies in the digital age.

List of Figures

Introduction: Cryptopolitics and Digital Media in Africa
Katrien Pype, Victoria Bernal, and Daivi Rodima-Taylor

Chapter 1. Four Ways of Not Saying Something in Digital Kinshasa: Or, On the Substance of Shadow Conversations
Katrien Pype

Chapter 2. The Power to Conceal in an Age of Social Media
Simon Turner

Chapter 3. KOT, Digital Practices and the Performance of Politics in Kenya
George Ogola

Chapter 4. The “Muslim Mali” Game: Revisiting the religious-security-post-colonial nexus in Malian popular culture
Marie Deridder and Olivier Servais

Chapter 5. Algorithmic Power in a Contested Digital Public: Crypto-politics and Identity in the Somali Conflict
Peter Chonka

Chapter 6. The Cryptopolitics of Digital Mutuality
Daivi Rodima-Taylor

Chapter 7. “This Dictatorship is a Joke: Eritrean Politics as Tragicomedy”
Victoria Bernal

Chapter 8. Digital Security in an African “Sanctuary City”
Lisa Poggiali

Conclusion: Studying Cryptopolitics
Daivi Rodima-Taylor, Katrien Pype, and Victoria Bernal

Index