Introduction
Mobile communication is increasingly playing a leading role in the mobilization of social and political protests around the world. There seem to be no known geographical boundaries for the digital revolution which the world is currently witnessing. From Chad to Chile, Mali to Myanmar, a new breed of digitally-based social initiatives have been gathering momentum for years, undoubtedly reinventing social activism as activists and ordinary people alike, eager to empower themselves politically and socially, embrace computers, mobile phones, and other web-based devices and technologies. With activists, mobile monitors, citizen journalists and digital story-tellers based in sub-Saharan Africa joining the fray, astutely bypassing hegemonic mass media gatekeepers by navigating through the online sphere to inspire collective political and social involvement across the continent, this highly contested discipline of research has attracted more attention than ever before. In spite of this attention, regionally in sub-Saharan Africa, there has been a shocking lack of empirical accounts detailing who is doing what, why, where, when and with what impact. It is this gap that this book hopes to fill.
This book provides insights into the complexity of new media technologies and their relationship with aspirations for democratic and social changes in sub-Saharan Africa from the perspective of an activist. Thus, its main thrust is to examine what, with whose aid, how, with what impact and why a new breed of online-based activism is forcing political and social elites out of their comfort zones by seeking to facilitate social and political changes among different African groups such as gender-based and LGBT movements. If, indeed, digitally inspired forms of protests are manifesting into street demonstrations and internet campaigns, as witnessed in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2015, the book critiques the real impact of online campaigning and civic engagements. Using a wide range of methodological perspectives, including surveys, social network analysis, online ethnography, interviews and participant observation, case studies in this volume assess trends and opportunities associated with the increasingly pervasive use of digital technologies. Henceforth, this book seeks to promote and advance our understanding of contemporary use of social media for the purposes of activism in present-day sub-Saharan Africa.
Conceptually, the book takes an inductive approach, seeking to interrogate new theoretical pathways representative of current trends in social media use and digital activism in sub-Saharan Africa. The reliance on inductive reasoning is preferred chiefly because this book, thanks to a series of case-by-case examinations of contemporary digital activism practices in a diverse range of countries including Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, and Chad, is seeking a potentially universal theory that holistically determines current trends, challenges and opportunities for online activism across Africa. Presently, there is no such theory, with major studies favouring Western concepts when it comes to theoretical grounding (Mutsvairo 2015). The opportunities and challenges presented by social media to Africans should best be understood, the book argues, from an African perspective. That does not mean that there is something wrong with Western scholarship but l, as many who have been following debates in the discipline on how social media is changing societies would agree, context is key. Africa has its own history. It arguably has its own political and social cultures. Differences in the way diverse groups on the continent are dealing with technological changes, particularly social media use in activism, is accordingly what this volume seeks to unpack.
Indeed some contributions in this book use Western theoretical underpinnings insofar as scrutinizing social media use and digital activism is concerned. However, such appraisals will seek to demonstrate experiences from an African viewpoint. For example, some cases analyse digital media-related concepts developed in the West, such as Fraser âs âsubaltern counterpublicsâ (1992), with a third eye, attempting to establish how relevant they are in the sub-Saharan African context and questioning whether new online-based activism tactics used by religious, political, gender-based and environmental groups are counter-hegemonic, as has been concluded in several Western studies (Ayres 1999; Castells 2001; Juris 2005; Van Laer and Van Aelst 2009).
With noticeable advancements in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), propose Surman and Reilly (2003), new opportunities for political activism have emerged. While we have seen few, or no, empirical studies investigating social media strategies used by advocacy groups for the purposes of activism in Africa, in other regions of the world researchers have been determinedly exploring this subject for a long time. Obar et al. (2012) and Obar (2014) have completed studies in both the US and Canada delving into the debate over new media technologiesâ ability to facilitate social and political activism, proving in both cases how profoundly and inherently extant the custom has become. Several other studies have also extensively examined the subject (examples include Polletta 2002; Tracy 2002; Reingold 2002; Sunstein 2003; Kampf 2010; Jansen 2010; McCafferty 2011; Castells 2012; Bertel and Stald 2013; Eltantawy 2013). In spite of this rich collection of studies, itâs no straightforward task to conclude that new media platforms can potentially instigate political and social changes especially in sub Saharan Africa. Realizing its potential, Fuchs et al. (2011) argue that the internet has the ability to build communities. Even better, online platforms have become global nodes for collective action (Lievrouw 2011; Segerberg and Lance Bennett 2011). Yet as projected by Naughton (2011), three advantages for activists stand out when it comes to social mediaâs increasingly enabling role: activists are empowered to easily connect; sympathizers can simply join in; citizens can watch and participate in real-life online activities. But social media can only facilitate protests, nothing more (Wolfsfeld et al. 2013). Further representing the sceptical school of thought, (Valenzuela 2013), based on his research in Chile, argues that social media does not craft new forms of protest but reinforces conventional techniques. Open internet access does not translate into political activism, as another sceptic (Morozov 2009) concludes. As scholars continue to debate the real essence of online activism, could such scepticism fit the cultural and geopolitical systems of sub-Saharan Africa?
By unveiling the network society, Castells (1997, 2009) and van Dijk (2005, 2006) provided an analysis of new information and communications technologies and their impact on different levels of interactions in society. Traditionally, activism has been reserved for âactivistsâ, but in the information age dominated by the powerful presence of social media, ordinary citizens making use of mobile media and technological platforms consider themselves activists too (Hara 2008). To understand the power of social media, one has to look no further than representative digital uprisings that include the 2001 Manila protests in the Philippines, the 2004 demonstrations in Spain, the 2006 uprising in Belarus and the 2010 Red Shirt uprising in Thailand (Shirky 2011). However, there is no lack of scholarship suggesting the internet on a broader scale could inhibit democracy across the world (Gutstein 1999; Moore 1999; Wilhelm 1999; Graham 2000). The internet is a resource for activists, although reaching a broader audience is not always a guarantee of democratic success, which is why I argue that in some cases (mostly in Africa) the overarching belief that everyone with internet access is potentially an activist is fundamentally flawed.
Worse still, when it comes to activism, providing a platform for protests does not always mean everyone understands the content of a message or knows what action to take upon reading it. Yet social media and technological changes have made activism easier by providing (especially for those living under autocratic regimes) platforms for debate and knowledge-sharing while also enabling a message to reach its targeted audience in unprecedented fashion, within seconds. Globally, activists could practically be sharing the same methods, strategies and aims but the situation in sub-Saharan Africa does not always guarantee shared successes and experiences. In Africa and other regions of the world, traditionally demand-driven campaign methods, including protests, strikes and demonstrations, have customarily been successful in shaping and reshaping policy, practice or operations. How, then, are activists making use of the technological innovations to successfully push their agendas? It is against this background that this book attempts to clarify these differences in comparison to other regions of the world, endeavouring to show the extent to which (and why) activist experiences from other regions of the world may not always apply to the African case. More interestingly, within Africa itself, differences in experiences, norms, beliefs, circumstances (cultural and economic) are aplenty, hence the bookâs approach: detailing continent-wide, case-by-case analyses of digital activism, civil engagement and democratic discourses.
Activism in Africa: Towards an African Spring?
Conceptualizing activism in an African context requires a cross-disciplinary examination of factors facilitating and inhibiting its growth across the continent. While popular media, including comics and music, have traditionally been associated with the protest and resistance movement, media scholars including Willems (2010, p. 46) have boldly called such suggestions ânaiveâ. Similarly, Wasserman also warns of the ânaĂŻve celebration of resistanceâ (2010, p. 10). Understanding digital activism in Africa requires a firm commitment to contextualizing the concept within a broad and diverse framework that underpins the continentâs cultural, economic, geopolitical and historical backgrounds. African scholarship has sought to critique notions of using Western concepts in assessing the impact of new media technologies within their societies. For instance, dismissing Shirky (2010)âs cognitive surplus as âclearly Western-centricâ (Lewis et al. 2013, p. 46) have taken a stance against the scholarâs âeffusive praise for the new connected ageâ arguing it âignores and fudges many complexities, contradictions and power relationsâ in an African state. While realizing its potential, they challenge commonly-held notions about the liberating capabilities of new media for women, concluding Fraser âs âsubaltern counterpublicsâ (1992) is a difficult concept when used in attempting to reconcile the difficulties fa...