Mobilising Gender and Politics in Social Media: The use of Mediated Mobilities in Researching Constructions of Malian-diasporic Belonging

Political research has often neglected the potentials of the new mobilities paradigm for analysing processes of political mobilisation, e.g. integrating physical, social, virtual, communicational, and imaginary mobilities. This especially applies to people from African societies whose mobilities are mostly investigated in terms of flight, social mobility, migration policies or labour migration. Research, thereby, neglects an opportunity to explore gender-related belongings that emerge through mediated mobilities as alternatives to the exclusionary discourses promoted by right-wing movements and parties. I seek to explore this potential and focus on the workings of mediated mobilities in gender-related political mobilisation by people in and from Mali, a nation with one of the highest migration rates worldwide, fast rising numbers of internet and social media use and increasing contestations of gender inequalities. My contribution will focus on forms of political mobilisation that emerge in constructions of belonging by users of a Malian-diasporic news portal and its social media accounts. Thereby, I will especially investigate the mediated mobilities entailed in the related practices. Using a combination of netnography and critical discourse analysis, I will illustrate how different users employ diverse mobilities to perform their gendered belongings through their visual, linguistic, topical, etc. engagement. Moreover, I will analyse if and how the circulation of gender-related contents among users leads to a transformation of discourses that promotes demands for more gender equality. This mobilising of and through constructions of belonging shall contribute to new understandings of gendered public spheres, political communication, and political subjects in a digital, transnational, and postcolonial context.