Social Media Networks: Increasingly Becoming Instruments For Tribalism

The year 2018 will forever be remembered in Cameroon as one in which  people from all the vertical and horizontal strata of the society effectively used social media outlets such as facebook, WhatsApp, twitter and Instagam to convey messages of all sorts.

While politicians, especially the nine candidates in the October 7, 2018 presidential election left indelible marks in their use of social media for their campaigns, some political figures used the same social media networks to stigmatise some candidates tagging their belonging to and also describing them as candidates of some ethnic groups or regions.  Equally through the social media networks, a handful of opposition politicians spread information that the ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM) was promoting and instituting tribalism  at the helm of power to better reign.

Never in history has Cameroon ever been attacked like in 2018. The secessionists fighters and their leaders in the English-speaking North West and South West Regions variously used social media networks to galvanise support and gain pity through hate messages. Information, photographs and videos they broadcast in especially facebook an...