This book proposes a new theorisation when studying cyber dissidents in an African digital sphere. It argues that social media dissidents are a recent development in a long lineage of dissidents in African societies. Using Zimbabwe as a case study, the study locates contemporary dissidents in the same family with other historical dissident figures found in African orature, the Chimurenga wars, through music, poetry and other forms of expression. The book argues against techno-deterministic approaches to studying social media-born digital dissidence in Africa. It is aimed at scholars dedicated to studying social media movements in African contexts and the global south generally, prompting them to re-evaluate their earlier conclusions and adopt a more nuanced and contextspecific approach.

This book reflects on the rapid rise of social media across the African continent and the legal and extra-legal efforts governments have invented to try to contain it. The relentless growth of social media platforms in Africa has provided the means of resistance, self-expression, and national self-fashioning for the continent’s restlessly energetic and contagiously creative youth. This has provided a profound challenge to the African "gatekeeper state", which has often responded with strategies to constrict and constrain the rhetorical luxuriance of the social media and digital sphere. Drawing on cases from across the continent, contributors explore the form and nature of social media and government censorship, often via antisocial media laws, or less overt tactics such as state cybersurveillance, spyware attacks on social media activists, or the artful deployment of the rhetoric of "fake news" as a smokescreen to muzzle critical voices. The book also reflects on the Chinese influence in African governments’ clampdown on social media and the role of Israeli NSO Group Technologies, as well as the tactics and technologies which activists and users are deploying to resist or circumvent social media censorship. Drawing on a range of methodologies and disciplinary approaches, this book will be an important contribution to researchers with an interest in social media activism, digital rebellion, discursive democracy in transitional societies, censorship on the Internet, and Africa more broadly.

This book proposes a new theorisation when studying cyber dissidents in an African digital sphere. It argues that social media dissidents are a recent development in a long lineage of dissidents in African societies. Using Zimbabwe as a case study, the study locates contemporary dissidents in the same family with other historical dissident figures found in African orature, the Chimurenga wars, through music, poetry and other forms of expression. The book argues against techno-deterministic approaches to studying social media-born digital dissidence in Africa. It is aimed at scholars dedicated to studying social media movements in African contexts and the global south generally, prompting them to re-evaluate their earlier conclusions and adopt a more nuanced and contextspecific approach.

This book investigates the role of the internet and social media in political processes in non-western and non-democratic contexts. Using Zimbabwe as a case study, the book demonstrates how activists and ordinary people deploy social media, particularly Facebook, to subvert an enduring hegemonic state. However, the book also highlights how authoritarian regimes are in turn learning and adapting to the information age, challenging the impact of digital activism. Studies of digital activism in the Global South are often centred around democracy, but this book paints a more complex picture, examining the role and effect of digital activism in challenging state hegemony in authoritarian contexts. The book notes that while communication technologies help mediate activism, they are also simultaneously constrained by pre-existing and emergent challenges tied to the social and political context and the inherent limitations of those technologies. The book investigates the tactics used by digital activists, the contextual factors and restrictive political environment they operate in, including the role of pro-government activists, and ultimately, the impact of digital activism given these constraints. From the case of Zimbabwe, the book builds out a broader theoretical analysis of the evolution of ‘third world protest’ in the digital age, examining the limitations of activists’ actions and the ideological deficit in online activism to ferment a virulent counter hegemony.

Edited by Lungile Tshuma, Trust Matsilele, Shepherd Mpofu and Mbongeni Msimanga, Media, Social Movements, and Protest Cultures in Africa: Hashtags, Humor, and Slogans provides a rich array of protest cultures in Sub-Saharan Africa, delving into the motivations for protests, how protests are carried out and how those targeted by protests try to undermine the protesting movements. Organized into three parts, this book examines social media and social movements, online protest strategies, and media texts used in various protest movements within Sub-Saharan Africa. The contributors shed light on the brutality of various post-colonial regimes in Africa while also giving the reader hope for the current movements that seek to wrestle their societies from the jaws of autocratic leaders. This book offers a theoretically rich and methodologically diverse engagement of protest cultures in countries like Zimbabwe, Nigeria, and Ethiopia. The wide tapestry of how these protests are formulated and executed speaks to Africa's diversity and dynamism. This book makes an important intellectual contribution on social and political movements and is relevant to policy makers and researchers in the social sciences and digital humanities.

This volume presents case studies of news media employing and integrating social media into their news production practices. It links social media use to journalistic practices and news production processes in the digital age of the Global South. Critically, the chapters look at seminal cases of start-up news media whose content is informed by trends in social media, ethical considerations and participatory cultures spurred by the wide use of social media. There has been considerable research looking at the potential of new media technologies, traditional journalism and citizen reporting. The extent to which these new media technologies and ‘citizen journalism’ have morphed or reconfigured traditional journalism practice remains debatable. Currently, there are questions around the limits of social media in journalism practice as the ethical lines continue to become blurred. It is this conundrum of the role of social media in the reconfiguration of the media, news making, production and participatory cultures that requires more investigation. Social media has also turned the logic of the political economy of media production on its head as citizens can now produce, package and distribute news and information with shoestring budgets and in authoritarian regimes with no license of practice. This new political economy means the power that special interest groups used to enjoy is increasingly slipping from their hands as citizens take back the power to appropriate social media journalism to counter hegemonic narratives. Citizens can also perform journalistic roles of investigating and whistleblowing but with a lack off, or limited, regulation. This volume seeks to explore and untangle these issues, and provides an invaluable resource for researchers across the field of journalism, mass media, and communication studies.