Class Online: Digital Representations of African Middle-Class Identity

Abstract

Class warfare has been taking place in Nigeria since the mid-nineteenth century but little attention has been paid to how Nigerian texts encapsulate class. If we are to investigate modern African identity and the construction of self in a digital age, shaped between globalizing and localizing tendencies, the question of social class cannot be ignored.
Our paper addresses tensions between forms of cultural representation and how these are mediated through the use of digital technologies. We argue that it is in the online writing space that we will be able to capture how a particular African 'middle-class' self is being engineered by writers of blogs, commentary, online poems, short fictions and essays; contributors to YouTube and other video posts.