BRING BACK OUR GIRLS

Two Wall Street Journal reporters examine the geopolitics surrounding the tragic 2014 kidnapping of Nigerian schoolgirls by Boko Haram.

Bringing together years of investigative reporting and the diaries of some of the victims, Parkinson and Hinshaw detail the relationships among terrorism, geopolitics, social media, local conflict, and American military intervention. In 2014, Boko Haram, led by a deeply disturbed and avid YouTube user named Abubakar Shekau, kidnapped 276 Nigerian schoolgirls from their dorm in the middle of the night. What followed was a uniquely 21st-century phenomenon tied to and distorted by social media in novel ways. The authors describe how the international interest of the events on Twitter affected the reality of hostage negotiations and prospects for release. In fact, the millions of well-intentioned tweets to #BringBackOurGirls actually endangered the girls further, emboldening Shekau to keep them as prized hostages. This “hashtag activism,” write the authors, impeded rescue efforts, as “the intense global focus on whether the girls would be rescued was part of why they couldn’t be.” The authors, both seasoned journalists, occasionally slip into overly detailed descriptions and spend more time than necessary on secondary actors, which disrupts the narrative momentum established by the girls’ diaries. At times, the text reads like a collection of articles. Ultimately, however, the authors effectively distill the myriad experiences into an intricate portrait of an unprecedented global event. Parkinson and Hinshaw recount the atrocities endured by the girls without undue sensationalism, and they artfully explore the fascinating relationship between social media and the girls’ testimonies. They also offer an engaging analysis of how the #BringBackOurGirls campaign morphed into a full-scale American military intervention. In light of the proliferation of hashtag activism by individuals and corporations following the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, this exploration of the unintended impact of social media activism is both poignant and relevant.

A nuanced investigation into the humanitarian realities beyond the viral #BringBackOurGirls campaign.