When watchdogs fight back: resisting state surveillance in everyday investigative reporting practices among Zimbabwean journalists

Abstract

ABSTRACT The recognition that digital surveillance is becoming ubiquitous has prompted varied responses from targeted groups. This article explores the ways through which journalists resist state-driven digital surveillance in Zimbabwe. It is based on in-depth qualitative interviews with practising journalists, sampled from the print media. The article utilises panopticon theory, which holds that victims of surveillance alter their behaviour upon the realisation of being surveilled. The interviews were subjected to thematic analysis. The article finds, among other issues, that as forms of resistance to surveillance, journalists in Zimbabwe now reduce their ‘digital footprints’ and have started to re-think the spaces in which they engage with their sources. The article argues that journalists, as a discursive community, should keep the issue of state surveillance on the mainstream agenda and maintain both organised and ad-hoc forms of resistance as ways of ‘speaking back to the state’. Conscientising the public can, possibly, provide a positive starting point for responsible, transparent and fair regulation of state surveillance practices and assist in ‘fencing off’ state intrusion in the field of journalism. In addition, journalists should push for legislation that protects their news sources.