Crisis communication in Sub-Saharan Africa: Media coverage of terrorist attacks in the age of social media

In recent years, terrorist attacks became a serious plague in West African countries. Thus, various academics focused their works on the phenomenon and its consequences on economy and the lives of population. However, there is no academic research about the framing of terrorist attacks by the West African media, especially in a context of social media predominance. Not only Media have a duty to inform the public regarding every major incident, but besides, the remarkably dramatic side of terrorism captivates a large audience. Hence, news about terrorism floods more and more West African media ecosystem today. Yet, an appropriate comprehension of the issue of terrorism could result from a cautious reflexion on the multifaceted nexus that exists between extremism, mass media and public-opinion. By generating an anxious environment full of tension, terrorists use media to encourage the mobilization of public opinion to discuss their extortions. In this research, I will analyse and assess the media agenda setting and crisis communication strategy implemented by media practitioners in West African countries following terrorist attacks. Thereby, this study aims to diagnose the attitude of media professionals in relation to the coverage of terrorism, analyse it and evaluate it in the light of the various ethical and deontological rules that govern the profession of journalism. As a result, the investigations are carried out on samples based on interviews, survey data analysis and contents analysis of the main digital media in Burkina Faso and Mali. Therefore, the current study is essentially qualitative but follows a Sequential Mixed Method. It encompasses an analysis of a total of 219 news articles from "Maliweb.net" and "LeFaso.net", along with a corpus of 98 surveyed population and 4 interviews realized with "resource persons". In doing so, the central purpose of this research is threefold. Firstly, it aims to investigate and establish a nexus between crisis communication, media framing and the advent of social media prevalence. Secondly, this study attempts to check whether the processing of information by West African media respects the professional rules of journalism. The third purpose of the research concerns the comprehension of the digital prosumers' behaviours towards counterfeits information related to terrorism in West African context. Keywords: Framing, terrorism, West Africa, Media, Maliweb.net, LeFaso.net.