SMS Can Never Replace WhatsApp: Internet Disruption, Social Media and Reflections on Connectivity/Sociality in Buea, Cameroon

Abstract

Information and communication technologies (ICT) have had soothing effects on social relationships over the last two decades: friends and families can easily locate and socialize with one another through smartphones, mobile phones, and the internet. Considering that the smartphone and social media are deeply embedded in users’ lives, how do they socialize online when the internet is disrupted? This article is theoretically informed by literature on connectivity and media infrastructure and the empirical data draws from in-depth narrative interviews, participation, and observation, looking at accounts of online sociality in a context where the government of Cameroon shut down the internet in the Anglophone part of the country in 2017. The research participants living in the non-internet space described themselves as people relegated to the margins of the modern world. Furthermore, the article reveals the ingenuity of those research participants who got online by traveling to the Francophone side of Cameroon.