DSR & Cyber Sovereignty in Africa

Apply Fairclough's concept of 'naturalization' to analyze how ideological phrases like 'win-win cooperation' become common sense in China's Digital Silk Road discourse.

Explain Fairclough's concept of the 'technologization of discourse' as the institutionalization of ideologies within social and technical systems.

Identify distinct demands from African states related to digital governance, such as economic development, regime stability, and data localization.

Analyze how 'Cyber Sovereignty' is constructed as a nodal point to articulate these disparate demands into a unified discourse.

Demonstrate how 'Cyber Sovereignty' is emptied of specific content to function as an 'empty signifier' that accommodates diverse political interests.

Construct a 'chain of equivalence' to illustrate how the nodal point of 'Cyber Sovereignty' unifies the identified African demands.

Explain Van Dijk's 'Ideological Square' as a tool for analyzing positive self-representation and negative other-representation in discourse.

Define the role of Mouffe's 'constitutive outside' in establishing the antagonistic frontier required for a hegemonic political identity.

Synthesize Van Dijk's Square and Mouffe's 'constitutive outside' to analyze how China frames Western norms as 'digital colonialism' to legitimize its alternative model.

Explain Mișcoiu's concepts of the 'split subject' and 'dislocation' as mechanisms for how counter-hegemonic discourses appeal to political actors.

Summarize Hess & Aidoo's framework on how African regime types influence the reception of external political narratives.