Abstract
The liberalization of the media and the concomitant formulation of national information and communication technology (ICT) policies in many African countries in the 1990s has for the most part led to the rapid expansion of mobile phone access and use in Africa. Compared with its predecessor, the landline telephone, the mobile phone has become the most commonly used technology by a cross-section of people in Africa, including for social media. Past research about the use of mobile phones for social change and development in Africa has focused on the contribution of this technology in improving the livelihoods of individuals and boosting small businesses. In a break from the focus of previous research, the editors of this collection have shifted the focus of ICT research to examine how voters, political parties, politicians, civil society groups, and other stakeholders in the political landscape use social media for political purposes in Africa.
In Social Media and Politics in Africa: Democracy, Censorship and Security, editors Maggie Dwyer and Thomas Molony bring together contributors to explore the ways various actors in African politics use ICTs, especially social media platforms to serve their agenda. The collection comprises empirical research from various geographical regions of Africa, specifically in the nations of Somalia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Kenya, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Nigeria, Burundi, and Tanzania. The collection avoids a technodeterministic approaches to ICTs by focusing on the complex and ever-evolving ways that Africans have shaped their political use of social media.
The adoption of the case study approach not only presents a rich analysis of unique social media practices but also lays bare the complexities and contradictions of the relationships between various actors in the political landscape, such as ordinary users, civil society organizations (CSOs), governments, and others. The approach taken by the editors of the collection will be helpful for scholars and practitioners from a variety of disciplines, including African studies, political science, development studies, media and communication, among others. The collection holds 12 well-researched chapters. It is not possible to discuss each chapter in this review. The review focuses on what the author perceives to be the overarching theme that runs through the collection. The depth and breadth of the chapters is a notable strength of the volume and serves to highlight the growing instrumental uses of African social media. The collection focuses primarily on how social media is transforming or altering political engagement on the continent by examining the work of individuals and groups to influence politics at various levels.
In Chapter 3, George Karekwaivanane and Admire Mare discuss how people used digital media to engage in contentious politics in Zimbabwe. According to the authors, digital platforms gave people the opportunity to practice what they call “insurgent citizenship” enabling them to insert themselves onto issues that affected them, for the first time, and without fear of repression. Online political engagement involved the use of “online artefacts of engagement” such as photos, memes, videos and sayings, and others, to galvanize and energize support for political change. In a country known for political suppression, online engagement “enabled citizens to surmount the geographic and legal barriers that hinder citizens from coming together to deliberate about Zimbabwe’s troubled social, political and economic situation” (p. 57). This chapter offers a fresh conceptual insight of political activism using social media and documents how social media activism can lead to successful campaigns against repressive regimes.
A number of chapters highlight the problematic nature of presidential elections in African countries and the central role played by CSOs in helping citizens agitate for political reforms. Maggie Dwyer, Jamie Hitchen and Thomas Molony address this issue in Sierra Leone’s 2018 elections in chapter 6. CSOs utilized social media, especially WhatsApp, to promote voter education and demand for transparency in elections, among others. Similarly, Nkwachukwu Orji in chapter 8 examines the similar work of CSOs in Nigeria’s national elections. Orji investigates how CSOs worked with the voters to ensure electoral transparency by allowing voters to share information about the problematic aspects of many elections, including the availability of electoral materials, the efficiency of the voting process, the work of election officials, and election conflicts. CSOs used the information collected from citizen journalists at the polling stations to document observer reports and disseminated these reports to Nigeria’s electoral body, and the media houses. The actions of CSOs altered the working of traditional media organizations who co-opted the services of citizen journalists to obtain a better coverage of the elections. Importantly, the co-optation of citizen journalists’ reports meant the media took seriously the voices of the people. The collaboration of CSOs and Nigeria’s electoral body demonstrates successful partnerships and provide a good example of how government agencies and public organizations can leverage social media to ensure transparency in African elections. This chapter stands out in the way it analyzes how social media has shaped each of the stages of the electoral process – observation, campaigns and administration.
Another important component of African elections is the work of political activists that Emily Riley examines in Senegal in chapter 7. Like the work of CSOs, political activists worked with voters to address the problems facing elections in the country. They used the social media platform to engage with the political leadership on the most pressing issues including holding democratic elections and voter suppression, among others. They took advantage of the affordances of social media to “force” political leaders to respond to their issues. The net effect of using this strategy of co-opting political leadership was that important electoral issues that would have been unattended received consideration. The chapter also illustrates the lengths democracy activists or actors go to get their messages heard. This involved adopting unconventional messaging styles on social media that people could associate or identify with, such as using humor to couch otherwise serious messages. These efforts of individuals or groups demonstrate that when leveraged “correctly”, social media can have positive effects on politics and elections.
Even as many Africans celebrate this milestone in political engagement, social media use for politics faces challenges. Charlotte Cross, writing about the policing of politics in Tanzania in chapter 10 notes that social media has become an essential component of electioneering in African countries, used during political party campaigns, protests, and as a source of information. However, the government is curtailing these freedoms. She argues, “Attempts to assess the transformative potential of social media for politics in Africa must take account of existing relationships between politics and policing” (p. 208). Using amorphous legislation headlined as cybercrime laws, the Tanzanian government monitors and controls political communications on social media platforms in the same way it did with traditional media. The government said it took the action to ensure peace and security and prevent the dissemination of false information. Writing about the related subject of surveillance in post-independent East Africa in chapter 13, Denis Galava, notes that these governments have used the problem of terrorism as a smokescreen to carry out large-scale surveillance with the aim of dominating and controlling their citizens. Governments often use the police and other national security apparatus to carry out control and surveillance. As Cross notes, “The police exercise a privileged role in determining what constitutes a threat to security and deciding upon a subsequent course of action” (p. 197). In addition to the police, media laws give government officials, such as ministers, with powers to interpret how online political discourse is likely to compromise national security. A major contradiction is that governments have given these agencies enormous powers to monitor people’s online political discourse despite their limited expertise and training in such matters. It is lamentable that such government controls, taking root in nascent democracies of East Africa are likely to curtail peoples’ online communication for fear of repression.
The second challenge facing the use of social media for political engagement in Africa is the digital divide. As someone who has studied the use of ICTs for social change and development in Kenya, I can attest to the negative effects of the digital divide on Africa’s development. Even as more people in Africa continue to have access to the internet mainly through the widely available smartphones, the digital divide of use and utility continues to be a barrier to digital inclusion. Related to the digital divide, people in Africa are not likely to derive the full benefits of digitized politics because social media platforms do not use the language spoken by the majority of the people. Most African countries comprise many communities, each with its own native language. People are more comfortable communicating in their first language and not in English. It is individuals with many years of formal schooling that are more comfortable speaking, reading and writing in English. Social media platforms, such as WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook and others use English as the operating language, yet a small fraction of the population can speak or write in English. Rather than bringing everyone on board, the digitization of politics is likely to exclude an important portion of the population. There is need for adaptation of social media interfaces in Africa to accommodate the communication needs of people at local levels.
Absence of basic literacy and digital literacy skills is another challenge that faces the performance of politics on social media platforms. In my field research with people of different ages and education levels using technology in rural Kenya, I learnt that navigating the mobile phone, let alone social media applications requires not only basic literacy but also digital literacy skills. The older generation that did not grow up with technology did not readily adopt these innovations in the same way as the younger generation. For instance, their utilization of the mobile phone was limited to mobile calling and basic text messaging while navigating the web was problematic. This goes to show that being literate and having digital capabilities are essential skills to engage in digital politics. The problem of basic literacy as well as digital literacy skills is likely to exacerbate inequalities within the population in terms of their participation in politics.
The final challenge facing the use of social media for politics in Africa is the likely use of these platforms for negative politics. Instructively, people used social media to spread hate and misinformation during Kenya’s disputed presidential elections in 2007–2008. I was a victim of misinformation that was making rounds on the cell phone messaging application while residing in the country during the time of contentious politics. African countries have experienced a fair share of the negative effects of contested politics, including violence, displacement, destruction of property, and even deaths. If left unchecked, social media can exacerbate the existing political divisions that are often the cause of political instability during elections. There is need for research examining the phenomenon of political misinformation on social media in Africa. At the same time, there is need to build the capacities of investigative organs to check the abuse of social media. Equally important is the development of social media literacy campaigns to help ordinary users of social media to distinguish positive from negative content.
This book captures the complexities and contradictions regarding the use of social media for politics in Africa. A major strength of this volume lies in the fact that the chapters speak to each other. The book comes at a time when more and more Africans are using social media for political engagement. As the first volume on the subject, the book offers a much-needed empirical research in this area and provides a springboard for future researchers to continue the research. I recommend this book to researchers exploring technology use in African contexts.
