Bruce Mutsvairo

Rethinking Mobile Media Tactics in Protests: A Comparative Case Study of Hong Kong and Malawi

This chapter examines two case studies–the Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong, and the July 20th protest in Malawi—to explore whether and how political activism through smartphone dissent networks enhances civic engagement. By probing the vitality, potentiality and ability of new communication and technological changes driving online civil action across the African continent, we explore what lessons countries can take from digitally-negotiated civil disobedience protests. The chapter will also discuss and theorize mobile media activism within social and geo-political realms, analyzing specific cases from Asia about the extent to which they have implications for understanding the changing dynamics of mobile media activism in sub-Saharan Africa. This chapter enriches and adds new dimensions to the current debates on the role of mobile media in political activism in a comparative light.

Reconnoitering the role of citizen journalism ethics in the emerging networked public sphere

Abstract Citizen journalism is emerging as a powerful phenomenon across Africa. The rise of digitally networked technologies is reshaping reporting across the continent. This change is technological (with social media platforms enabling new forms of publishing, receiving and discussing stories) as well as cultural, with idiosyncratic conventions emerging on these platforms. This study surveys the ethical beliefs of citizen journalists in several sub-Saharan African countries. The research showed that they are driven by a sense of social responsibility and a wish to inform their readers and the general public. Citizen journalists show a clear anti-authoritarian strain and an antipathy towards government regulation, yet most see themselves as subject to the same ethics that guide traditional journalism.

Pictures, Protests and Politics: Mapping Twitter Images during South Africa’s Fees Must Fall Campaign

ABSTRACT News media have often been criticised for framing social protests in negative ways, particular through photojournalism. While news photographs can shape the publics understanding of social and political events, research has shown that journalists often portray dramatic, violent or sensationalist images. This paper shifts the focus from mainstream news media, to explore how citizens themselves visually frame protests. The paper provides results from a qualitative analysis of the images shared by Twitter users during the national Fees Must Fall (FMF) student protests in South Africa, which began in October 2015. The paper analyses the representational strategies of the protest images tweeted, questioning how these visual images produce accounts of the social world, and further, how those accounts are constructed as “truthful” via their circulation in social media. Moreover, this analysis of the images circulated on Twitter and labelled using the hashtag Fees Must Fall (#FMF), explores the role played by images in strategic online communication within the campaign. An examination of this specific case contributes toward an understanding of social protest in an African context, particularly with respect to how new technologies and social media are increasingly being used as tools for political mobilisation.

Recapturing Citizen Journalism: Processes and Patterns

In today’s increasingly innovative and globalized world, it is impossible to ignore the dominance of an emerging new form of journalism characterized by rapid reporting, interminable interactivity and ubiquitous multimedia content sharing and customization. Indeed, digital technologies have had a profound effect on the way news content is perceived, produced, shared and analysed. It therefore is by no surprise that the emergence of citizen journalism has not escaped scientific scrutiny (see Allan and Thorsen, 2009; Benkler, 2006). Produced in a matter of seconds, news can be shared instantly across the world, with the supremacy of citizen-inspired content becoming an overriding feature of contemporary news production. The etymology of “citizen journalism” barely needs to be studied anymore as the term is widely used and commonly accepted. But in a world where any computer or mobile phone owner is potentially a news publisher, concerns will be raised about the long-term reliability and expediency of news and content produced by non-professional actors in a technologically deterministic and fast transforming world of journalism. It is against this background that this book uses a case-to-case analysis of citizen journalism practices, based on specific studies from sub-Saharan Africa, with a view of scrutinizing this palpable emerging force — which, thanks to the ubiquity of new media technologies, continues to gather significant momentum in Africa and beyond — and investigating positivistic claims linking technological revolution to democratic changes.

Dispatches from the Dispersed: Comparatively Analysing Internet-Based Diasporic Journalism within Zimbabwean and Iranian Contexts

Digital technologies are increasingly becoming part of the regular practice of a range of political actors. New media communications have helped politicians, activists and their organizations to disseminate political messages to their audiences and constituencies. Clarke’s (2010) study of the political uses and implications of social media in Canada supports this claim. While acknowledging social media’s potential, some, such as Bimber (2001), are sceptical about their ability to politically mobilize citizens. Still others, such as Shulman (2005), even go as far as suggesting that digital activism is largely characterized by the ‘feel good factor’ for the activists rather than its notable political involvement. Digital activism, a term that Joyce (2010) argues is itself contested, has been dominating the communication studies discourse thanks to palpable connections with political activism aided by new media’s ubiquity. Concurrently, the spread of Internet communications across geopolitical borders has brought the issue of diaspora participation in ‘homeland’ political affairs into sharp relief. New technologies facilitate the expression of long-distance involvement in political developments in new ways (see Bernal, 2006; Chan, 2005). One of these forms of involvement is through web-based diasporic journalism — a phenomenon that has received relatively little scholarly attention.

If I were a Carpenter: Reframing Debates in Media and Communication Research in Africa

There has never been a better opportunity to rethink media and communication research in an Afrocentric context than the one presenting itself courtesy of this volume. Thanks to the constantly evolving nature of these customarily paired disciplines, it has become imperative to evaluate the work we are doing and indeed what those before us accomplished. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss and critique research in the aforementioned fields using Africa as a point of departure. It seeks to comprehend the real meaning of research for those of us studying media and communications in Africa. It also seeks to appreciate the opportunities and threats faced by those conducting research in media and communications. Plenty of questions are posed not only in this chapter but in all sections of this volume. How should African media research be perceived by fellow scholars within or outside the continent? What constitutes African? What are research ethics? Should African researchers adopt ethics suggested by European colleagues?

Can the Subaltern Think? The Decolonial Turn in Communication Research in Africa

The title of this chapter is provocative. This is because all scholars, regardless of background, always consider themselves critical thinkers. After all, academic research is by default a space for the robust exchange of ideas and the production of knowledge. At its best, media and communication studies research must be original, critical, transformative, and clearly add to the contours of a multicultural critical theory as imagined in various places and philosophical traditions. Good research must give birth to critical thinking that not only interprets the world, but changes it by unmasking all forms of domination beyond the insubstantial nature of neoliberal theory and Marxian reductionism. In the broader field of the Humanities, theory that both undergirds research and is also produced by research must be critical. As a form of higher order thinking, theory must deliver substantive rationality as opposed to instrumental rationality. In communication studies research, theory must not limit itself to craft skills needed by journalists in industry, but must also seek to produce interventions that align media work with the broader struggle for social justice, egalitarianism, and freedom of the self and community.

Key Developments in Political Communication in Africa

The major purpose of this study is to conceptualise political communications beyond assessing the role of mass media in election campaigns in Africa. We are concerned with how the media influences participation in political decision-making, production, publication, procession and distribution of media messages among interactive citizens, probing ways through which these mechanisms influence political processes in Africa. We seek to scrutinise, within a pietistic political context, the manipulation of mass media messages, information-censorship techniques among the political elites, the discursive political potential of social media platforms and the plethora of a politicised public opinion, ascertaining end-to-end analysis of the history, rituals, concepts and theoretical insights of political communication within an African context. For several reasons, some of which are conscientiously analysed here, the formal ending of colonialism has been marked by a debilitating delay towards democratisation, with journalists and media professionals seeking to maintain allegiance to the ruling party, which normally controls the media, in return for either political protection or journalistic privileges.

Emerging political narratives on Malawian digital spaces

ABSTRACT Social media platforms are being considered new podiums for political transformation as political dictatorships supposedly convert to overnight democracies, and many more people are not only able to gain access to information, but also gather and disseminate news from their own perspective. When looking at the situation in several sub-Saharan African countries, it becomes clear there are various challenges restricting social media and its palpable yet considerably constrained ability to influence political and social changes. Access to the internet, or lack thereof, is a recognised social stratification causing a “digital divide” thanks to existing inequalities within African and several other societies throughout the world. This article reports on a study that analysed a popular Facebook page in Malawi using a discursive online ethnographic examination of interactions among social media participants seeking to determine the level of activism and democratic participation taking shape on the Malawian digital space. The study also examined potential bottlenecks restraining effective digital participation in Malawi. The article argues that while social medias potential to transform societies is palpable, keeping up with the pace of transformation is no easy task for both digital and non-digital citizens. The study demonstrated social medias potential but also highlighted the problems facing online activists in Malawi, including chief among them digital illiteracy. Therefore, the digital sphere is not a political podium for everyone in Malawi as shown by the analysis of digital narratives emerging from the countrys online environment, which opens its doors to only a tiny fraction of the population.

Dovetailing Desires for Democracy with New ICTs’ Potentiality as Platform for Activism

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.