This book brings together fresh evidence and new theoretical frameworks in a unique analysis of the increasing role of social media in political campaigns and electoral processes across Africa. Supported by contemporary and historical cases studies, it engages with the main drives behind the various appropriations of social media for election campaigns, organization, and voter mobilization. Contributors in this volume delve into changing and complex aspects of social media, offering an appraisal of theoretical perspectives and examining fascinating case studies which social media use is redefining elections across Africa. Contributions show that new media ecologies are resulting in new policy regimes, user behaviors, and communication models that have implications for electoral processes. The book also provides preliminary analysis of emerging forms of algorithm-driven campaigns, fake news, information distortions and other methods that undermine electoral democracy in Africa.
This book, the second of two volumes, explores the challenges and opportunities presented by the increased presence of social media within African politics. Electoral processes in Africa have assumed new dimensions due to the influence of social media. As social media permeates different aspects of elections, it is ostensibly creating new challenges and opportunities. Most evident are the challenges of hate speech, misogyny and incivility. This book considers the impact of digital media before, during, and after elections, as well as authorities' attempts to legislate and regulate the internet in response. Contributions to this volume analyse social media posts, transgressive images, newspaper articles, and include case studies of Algeria, Zimbabwe, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria and Uganda. This results in the delivery of an original depiction of the use of social media in a variety of African contexts. This book will appeal to academics and students of media and communication studies, political studies, journalism, sociology, and African studies.
The smartphone and social media have transformed Africa, allowing people across the continent to share ideas, organise, and participate in politics like never before. While both activists and governments alike have turned to social media as a new form of political mobilization, some African states have increasingly sought to clamp down on the technology, introducing restrictive laws or shutting down networks altogether. Drawing on over a dozen new empirical case studies – from Kenya to Somalia, South Africa to Tanzania – this collection explores how rapidly growing social media use is reshaping political engagement in Africa. But while social media has often been hailed as a liberating tool, the book demonstrates how it has often served to reinforce existing power dynamics, rather than challenge them. Featuring experts from a range of disciplines from across the continent, this collection is the first comprehensive overview of social media and politics in Africa. By examining the historical, political, and social context in which these media platforms are used, the book reveals the profound effects of cyber-activism, cyber-crime, state policing and surveillance on political participation.
From the upheavals of recent national elections to the success of the #MyDressMyChoice feminist movement, digital platforms have already had a dramatic impact on political life in Kenya – one of the most electronically advanced countries in Africa. While the impact of the Digital Age on Western politics has been extensively debated, there is still little appreciation of how it has been felt in developing countries such as Kenya, where Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and other online platforms are increasingly a part of everyday life. Written by a respected Kenyan activist and researcher at the forefront of political online struggles, this book presents a unique contribution to the debate on digital democracy. For traditionally marginalised groups, particularly women and people with disabilities, digital spaces have allowed Kenyans to build new communities which transcend old ethnic and gender divisions. But the picture is far from wholly positive. Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics explores the drastic efforts being made by elites to contain online activism, as well as how 'fake news', a failed digital vote-counting system and the incumbent president's recruitment of Cambridge Analytica contributed to tensions around the 2017 elections. Reframing digital democracy from the African perspective, Nyabola's ground-breaking work opens up new ways of understanding our current global online era.
How to Win Elections in Africa explores how citizens, through elections, can uproot the power structures that govern them. It draws examples from within and outside Africa, whilst examining the past and present in a bid to map a future where the political playing field is level and citizens can rewrite existing narratives. Africa stands at the cusp of remarkable change. Citizens across the continent are finally coming to terms with the fact that only they--albeit collectively--wield the most important powers: to elect, to impeach and generally demand the accountability of those in whom they repose political powers. In Nigeria, The Gambia, Ghana, Seychelles, South Africa, Kenya, Liberia, Senegal, Rwanda (to mention a few), citizens have and are demanding the dissolution of political structures and establishments that no longer serve them well. Through their pioneer nation-building agency, StateCraft Inc., the authors of How to Win Elections in Africa have not only encouraged the galvanization towards a citizen-led democratic takeover across the continent, they have also helped ensure successes of these takeovers in at least three Presidential elections in Ghana and Nigeria. Their experiences in this regard, garnered through years of interacting with Africa's large youth population, is what they have drawn on to write this compendium of essays. The book explores the factors often ignored by social and political activists, donors, campaign organisers, social engineers and citizens alike; factors that actually contribute to successful elections globally and how they feed into the peculiar African set-up. With 35 chapters written with the most optimistic tone, How to Win Elections in Africa goes through the political institutions of every modern democracy and breaks down how each one from political parties to civil societies, donors and social activists, as well as factors such as legacy, messaging, media, and money feeds into the goal of helping citizens make their voices heard through free and fair elections. The book was launched in Yale and the authors have been on a book tour of the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.
The Encyclopedia of Social Media and Politics explores how the rise of social media is altering politics both in the United States and in key moments, movements, and places around the world. Its scope encompasses the disruptive technologies and activities that are changing basic patterns in American politics and the amazing transformations that social media use is rendering in other political systems heretofore resistant to democratization and change. In a time when social media are revolutionizing and galvanizing politics in the United States and around the world, this encyclopedia is a must-have reference. It reflects the changing landscape of politics where old modes and methods of political communication from elites to the masses (top down) and from the masses to elites (bottom up) are being displaced rapidly by social media, and where activists are building new movements and protests using social media to alter mainstream political agendas. Key Features This three-volume A-to-Z encyclopedia set includes 600 short essays on high-interest topics that explore social media’s impact on politics, such as “Activists and Activism,” “Issues and Social Media,” “Politics and Social Media,” and “Popular Uprisings and Protest.” A stellar array of world renowned scholars have written entries in a clear and accessible style that invites readers to explore and reflect on the use of social media by political candidates in this country, as well as the use of social media in protests overseas Unique to this book is a detailed appendix with material unavailable anywhere else tracking and illustrating social media usage by U.S. Senators and Congressmen. This encyclopedia set is a must-have general, non-technical resource for students and researchers who seek to understand how the changes in social networking through social media are affecting politics, both in the United States and in selected countries or regions around the world.
Handbook of Social Media in Education, Consumer Behavior and Politics explores the impact of social media within these systems. The book covers who contributes to social media, from social influencers to everyday people, how that information is disseminated in shares and likes, and the impact social media has on perception, opinion and behavior. Education coverage includes influences on pedagogy, class participation, e-learning, academic performance, and it's use and influence on teachers, parents and students. Coverage in economics and commercialization includes different types of digital marketing and social media, the rise of social influencers, and impacts on consumer behavior. Coverage in politics includes the impact on political awareness, participation and its impact on election outcomes. Coverage on design and innovation includes the design of social media and tools and approaches for maximizing impact. - Reviews the economic impacts of social media, including social media influencers and digital marketing - Explores teacher, student and parental use of social media in K-12 education - Discusses how social media impacts elections and political awareness - Investigates the tools and approaches for impacting social change in a social media world
How the 2016 news media environment allowed Trump to win the presidency The 2016 presidential election campaign might have seemed to be all about one man. He certainly did everything possible to reinforce that impression. But to an unprecedented degree the campaign also was about the news media and its relationships with the man who won and the woman he defeated. Words that Matter assesses how the news media covered the extraordinary 2016 election and, more important, what information—true, false, or somewhere in between—actually helped voters make up their minds. Using journalists' real-time tweets and published news coverage of campaign events, along with Gallup polling data measuring how voters perceived that reporting, the book traces the flow of information from candidates and their campaigns to journalists and to the public. The evidence uncovered shows how Donald Trump's victory, and Hillary Clinton's loss, resulted in large part from how the news media responded to these two unique candidates. Both candidates were unusual in their own ways, and thus presented a long list of possible issues for the media to focus on. Which of these many topics got communicated to voters made a big difference outcome. What people heard about these two candidates during the campaign was quite different. Coverage of Trump was scattered among many different issues, and while many of those issues were negative, no single negative narrative came to dominate the coverage of the man who would be elected the 45th president of the United States. Clinton, by contrast, faced an almost unrelenting news media focus on one negative issue—her alleged misuse of e-mails—that captured public attention in a way that the more numerous questions about Trump did not. Some news media coverage of the campaign was insightful and helpful to voters who really wanted serious information to help them make the most important decision a democracy offers. But this book also demonstrates how the modern media environment can exacerbate the kind of pack journalism that leads some issues to dominate the news while others of equal or greater importance get almost no attention, making it hard for voters to make informed choices.
