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.
Lungile Tshuma is researcher in the Centre for Communication and Culture at the Universidade Catolica Portuguesa. Trust Matsilele is senior lecturer at Birmingham City University. Shepherd Mpofu is associate professor of media and communication at the University of South Africa. Mbongeni Msimanga is postdoctoral fellow at the Johannesburg Institute of Advanced Study.
Introduction: Contesting Africa: A Theoretical Appreciation of Media, Social Movements and Protest Cultures Lungile Tshuma, Trust Matsilele, Shepherd Mpofu and Mbongeni Msimanga Part I: Social Media and Social Movements Chapter 1: Violence as A Decolonizing and (De)humanizing Force, and Social Media(ted) Protests in Africa Shepherd Mpofu Chapter 2: Disrupting Patriotic Discourse in Zimbabwe: Reading Evan Mawarire's #This Flag as Counter-Hegemony Blessing Makwambeni Chapter 3: Testing the Illusory Truth Effect: An Analysis of Comments to Nigerian Army's "fake news" Tweets on Lekki #EndSARS Shootings Raheemat Adeniran and Kunle Adebajo Chapter 4: #VoetsekANC: (un)Civil Disobedience as Protest Action in South Africa's Twittersphere Trust Matsilele and Blessing Makwambeni Chapter 5: #EndSARS: The Role of Social Media Influencers in Raising Awareness of Police Brutality in Nigeria Temitope Opeyemi Falade and Lungile Tshuma Part II: Online Protest Strategies Chapter 6: Online Protests and Government Countermeasures in Zimbabwe: A Decolonial Perspective Tawanda Mukurunge and Lorenzo Dalvit Chapter 7: #I DON'T PAY HIDDEN DEBTS: An Analysis of Public Integrity Center (CIP) Digital Communication Campaign in Mozambique Tania Machonisse Chapter 8: Of Protests and Satire: Representations of #EndSARS Brutality in Selected Nigerian Hip-Hop Music Ruth Karachi Benson Oji Chapter 9: Ironic Activism and Social Justice: A Case Study of Political Satire and Social Media in Zimbabwe Mbongeni Msimanga Part III: Media Texts Production Chapter 10: Protesting for Change: Ethiopia's Diasporic Media and the Fight for Democracy Solomon Kebede and Abit Hoxha Chapter 11: Gukurahundi Memory, Subversive Pleasures, and Protest Cultures in Zimbabwe Mphathisi Ndlovu and Nkosini A. Khupe Chapter 12: Theorising Graffiti as a Novel Alternative Public Sphere in Zimbabwe's Contested Politics Nyasha Cefas Zimuto Chapter 13: Publishing as Revolutionary Tools from Pre-Independence to Post-independence Kenya Job Mwaura Chapter 14: Photographs, Protest and Memory: A Case of #Blacklivesmatter in South Africa Lungile Tshuma About the Editors and Contributors
This wonderfully rich collection of research adds a powerful perspective to the study of media in society as an organic mechanism rather than an instrumental technology, subtly shaping the ways social movements and protest cultures have organized and evolved. -- Mark Deuze, University of Amsterdam A captivating appraisal of protest movements in Africa edited by Lungile Tshuma, Trust Matsilele, Shepherd Mpofu, and Mbongeni Msimanga, whose knowledge of the continent coupled with unwavering commitment to empiricism has made them some of the leading voices in the field. Anyone researching social movements with a transnational theoretical approach needs to read this book. -- Bruce Mutsvairo, Utrecht University Media, Social Movements, and Protest Cultures in Africa: Hashtags, Humor, and Slogans is an empirically rich volume, thick in description and illuminating examples of social movements in Africa and their mechanics of protest, ranging from their political instrumentalization of social media to the creative appropriation and use of popular cultural forms, such as music and satire. This book is a commendable addition to scholarship on protest cultures in Africa. -- George Ogola, University of Nottingham
