Social Media and Elections in Africa, Volume 1

The interplay between media and politics is central to any understanding of political campaigning. Indeed, researchers argue that politics is communication and media are central to the mediation of politics. For many years, African politics suffered through a dearth of mass media, which often was government-controlled and had limited penetration beyond urban centres. Election campaigning was limited to a few media outlets, as well as local rallies and door-to-door canvasing. The media ecology, dominated by state-owned media and broadcasting monopolies, advantaged the incumbent parties. The rise in the penetration of smartphones and mobile internet is fundamentally changing the political communication landscape in much of Africa. This introductory chapter discusses the advent of social media and its implications for election campaigning in Africa. It argues that social media is disrupting well-established forms of elite control over the media. It is creating new methods of election campaigning and transforming how citizens interact with political messages. Social media is a potential game changer to election processes in Africa, bringing with it new opportunities but also new challenges.

Social media is becoming a dominant factor in electoral processes, with platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and WhatsApp increasingly having a tremendous influence on the creation, dissemination and consumption of political content in Africa. The social media platforms collect and collate large amounts of data from their users. The power of algorithms in filtering, ranking, selecting and recommending content makes them a significant factor in election campaigns. The objective of this chapter is to examine how these social media algorithms and bots are influencing elections in the African context. The chapter argues that social media algorithms and bots are slowly changing the dynamics of elections in Africa, presenting new prospects as well as challenges for the fledgling democracies.

This chapter argues that comparative scholarship can serve both as a method for unearthing distinctive continent-wide political communication practices and as an epistemological locus for questioning the largely Anglo-American perspective and standards of campaign models and literature. The chapter is, therefore, methodological and makes a case for comparative political communication scholarship. Specifically, it proposes a framework for the cross-contextual exploration of emerging campaign practices in Africa. The chapter examines the ontological and epistemological debate in the field and highlights evolving trends and elements that can guide comparison of African political communication. It also provides a vivid methodological light on guiding principles of the comparative method. Furthermore, the chapter offers vital indicators for justifying case selection as well as a signpost for addressing the question of methodological equivalence.

Twitter has emerged as an important counter-power to “big men” politics in Africa. Long denied access to mainstream media, which is captured by commercial and political interests, ordinary Africans have had to rely on alternative communication to challenge and counter untruths and lies from political leaders who routinely steal elections and behave in an authoritarian manner. The presidential tweets give the impression that they are delivering on election promises, and yet hide many problems on the grounds, including denial of social, economic and political rights to Africans. The chapter demonstrates how social media has emerged as an important avenue for some citizens to expose such hypocrisy, register dissent and to offer counter-narratives that challenge presidential propaganda in Nigeria, Uganda and Zimbabwe, even though the wider ramifications of these alternate tweets for electoral politics are arguably at an initial stage. What is undeniable is that the relative ease of creating and disseminating social media content is broadening political communication and giving rise to new ways of civic participation and agency in electoral politics across Africa. The distributed intelligence of social media is resulting in new hope for democratisation but has also become a thorn in the flesh for those in power. What is at stake is the increased power of user-consumers, which is resulting from easier access, digital behaviours and freer speech than before. Being in charge will never be the same for those in power in Africa. The voice of the marginalised voters, both individuals and collectives, is growing louder as they tweet back to counter electoral lies and misinformation from their leaders.

This chapter discusses the use of Twitter in mediating Zimbabwe’s 2018 elections. It provides an understanding of how two visible and contesting groups appropriated the platform during this period. The chapter responds to two specific questions: In what ways did the contesting groups make use of Twitter during the election period? What themes emerged from this use of the platform? It finds that Twitter became a space where the physical violence prevalent in Zimbabwe’s previous elections was enacted through discourse. It was also a space where opposition supporters challenged the hegemony of the ruling party and provided a space for political resistance. It further finds that there is an overall decline in civility on the platform with regard to election discourses.

The chapter contextualizes the evolving democratic credentials of social media as a contemporary tool in broadening the participatory principle of Ghana’s multiparty democracy. In order to unravel the efficacy of this emerging phenomenon, the chapter deployed relevant theories, concepts and methods and engaged with empirical arguments to establish the nexus between social media, democracy, participation and engagement. These empirical analyses and discussions produced a point of convergence—democratization of communication for active participation of citizens. It is argued that social media as a participatory and mobilizing platform for electoral democracy does not take away the vital role of traditional media in Ghana’s democratic process. Also of value are the concerns of civil society for a regulatory framework to guide the use of social media before, during and after elections to curb the propagation of unsubstantiated information on these platforms.

Social media has gained considerable grounds in facilitating democratic processes in developing countries like Cameroon. Electorates now have an unlimited and uncensored chance to exchange views with candidates seeking election. This study examines the extent and nature of social media (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram) use in the 2018 presidential election in Cameroon. A content analysis of candidates’ postings (July 13–October 30) was conducted. Results show that in September 2018, a month to voting, social media use was highest (104 posts). The two leading candidates, Paul Biya and Maurice Kamto, had a bulk of the posts, showing a correlation between social media use and candidates’ performance. As recommendation, candidates and potential voters should get acquainted with social media and their usefulness in influencing electoral processes.

This chapter investigates how, why and for what purposes political actors and citizens in Zimbabwe used traditional and digital media, especially Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter, before, during and after the 30 July 2018 elections. Relying on a combination of virtual ethnography and in-depth interviews, this chapter provides new evidence of the sophisticated appropriation of the hybrid media system in a context where over 60 percent of the electorate was made up of youthful voters. Building on Mare’s (2018) previous research on Facebook and electoral campaigns in Zimbabwe, this chapter cautions against the reification of digital media as the “silver bullet” with transformative power to democratize and transform toxic electoral politics in Zimbabwe.

The Kingdom of Eswatini underwent elections in September 2018, which did not witness the extensive use of social media. Contrary to trends in other African countries, the campaigns were offline. This chapter seeks to find out why, despite the increasing use of social media in electoral campaigns across Africa, Eswatini has not been part of the bandwagon? Through analysing Botswana and Lesotho, the chapter looks at how they have been impacted by social media and the nature of engagement on this space. In Botswana and Lesotho, politicians have embraced social media for campaigning. Internet restriction, marginalisation and censorship of opposition parties from traditional state-owned media prior to or during elections are evident which have facilitated online political communication and offered an alternative dialogical space.

The advancements in information technology and communication systems have propelled public political participation to non-traditional avenues of engagement and decisional influence such as social media. As dictatorial governments gradually render parliamentary structures obsolete and complacent, the public has found solace and an outlet through social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp. The question, however, lies in the extent to which these avenues of citizen engagement and participation promote democracy. Thus, by examining the deliberative nature of Bobi Wine’s inspired social media debates on parliamentary politics in Uganda, this chapter concludes that even when there are cases of animosity in Facebook threads, citizens strive to offer justification for their standpoints and acts with respect toward the demands of others, hence promoting deliberative democracy.

The advancement of information and communication technologies has ushered in a digital era of democracies, revolutionising politics, communication and electoral processes. This chapter examines how Ghana’s two main political parties—the New Patriotic Party and the National Democratic Congress—use social media. It explores “Facebooking” in political communication and engagements in Ghana—how political parties appropriated Facebook especially in their 2018 intra-party elections. Conclusions are drawn from findings and a discussion of data from Facebook and interviews. The political parties used Facebook in communication and intra-party elections. However, these parties minimally appropriated Facebook, as they employed it for disseminating public information rather than for interactive and mutually beneficial engagements via two-way symmetrical communication for support. Hence, the need for enlightened communication and political public relations for improved use of social media.