Social Media and Politics in Africa

Social Media and Politics in Africa PDF Author: Maggie Dwyer
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
ISBN: 178699500X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
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.

Social Media and Politics in Africa

Social Media and Politics in Africa PDF Author: Maggie Dwyer
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
ISBN: 178699500X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Social Media and Democracy

Social Media and Democracy PDF Author: Nathaniel Persily
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108835554
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
A state-of-the-art account of what we know and do not know about the effects of digital technology on democracy.

Talkative Polity

Talkative Polity PDF Author: Florence Brisset-Foucault
Publisher: Ohio University Press
ISBN: 0821446665
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 439

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Book Description
For the first decade of the twenty-first century, every weekend, people throughout Uganda converged to participate in ebimeeza, open debates that invited common citizens to share their political and social views. These debates, also called “People’s Parliaments,” were broadcast live on private radio stations until the government banned them in 2009. In Talkative Polity, Florence Brisset-Foucault offers the first major study of ebimeeza, which complicate our understandings of political speech in restrictive contexts and force us to move away from the simplistic binary of an authoritarian state and a liberal civil society. Brisset-Foucault conducted fieldwork from 2005 to 2013, primarily in Kampala, interviewing some 150 orators, spectators, politicians, state officials, journalists, and NGO staff. The resulting ethnography invigorates the study of political domination and documents a short-lived but highly original sphere of political expression. Brisset-Foucault thus does justice to the richness and depth of Uganda’s complex political and radio culture as well as to the story of ambitious young people who didn’t want to behave the way the state expected them to. Positioned at the intersection of media studies and political science, Talkative Polity will help us all rethink the way in which public life works.

Democracy and the Mass Media

Democracy and the Mass Media PDF Author: Judith Lichtenberg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521388177
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
These essays discuss US policy in regulating the media and the reconciliation of the First Amendment.

Africa's Media, Democracy and the Politics of Belonging

Africa's Media, Democracy and the Politics of Belonging PDF Author: Francis B. Nyamnjoh
Publisher: Zed Books
ISBN: 9781842775837
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
An overview of the press and mass media in Africa today and their contribution to democratization

The Press and Political Culture in Ghana

The Press and Political Culture in Ghana PDF Author: Jennifer Hasty
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253111357
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
In The Press and Political Culture in Ghana, Jennifer Hasty looks at the practices of journalism and newsmaking at privately owned and state-operated daily newspapers in Ghana. Hasty decodes the styles and uncovers the strategies that characterize Ghana's major printed news media, focusing on the differences between news generated by the state and news that comes from private sources. Not only are the angles radically different, but so are ways of gathering the news, assigning beats, using sources, and writing articles. For all its differences in presentation, however, Hasty shows that the news in Ghana projects a unified voice that is the result of a contentious and multifarious process that joins Ghanaians in global, national, and local debates. An important engagement with the production of news and news media, this book also explores questions about the relationship of popular culture to state politics, the expression of civic culture, and the role of the media in constituting national and cultural identities.

Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics

Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics PDF Author: Nanjala Nyabola
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 178699433X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
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.

Institutions and Democracy in Africa

Institutions and Democracy in Africa PDF Author: Nic Cheeseman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107148243
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 399

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Book Description
Offers new research on the vital importance of institutions, such as presidential term-limits in the African democratisation processes.

Arab Media Systems

Arab Media Systems PDF Author: Carola Richter
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
ISBN: 1800640625
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
This volume provides a comparative analysis of media systems in the Arab world, based on criteria informed by the historical, political, social, and economic factors influencing a country’s media. Reaching beyond classical western media system typologies, Arab Media Systems brings together contributions from experts in the field of media in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) to provide valuable insights into the heterogeneity of this region’s media systems. It focuses on trends in government stances towards media, media ownership models, technological innovation, and the role of transnational mobility in shaping media structure and practices. Each chapter in the volume traces a specific country’s media – from Lebanon to Morocco – and assesses its media system in terms of historical roots, political and legal frameworks, media economy and ownership patterns, technology and infrastructure, and social factors (including diversity and equality in gender, age, ethnicities, religions, and languages). This book is a welcome contribution to the field of media studies, constituting the only edited collection in recent years to provide a comprehensive and systematic overview of Arab media systems. As such, it will be of great use to students and scholars in media, journalism and communication studies, as well as political scientists, sociologists, and anthropologists with an interest in the MENA region.

Strategies for Media Reform

Strategies for Media Reform PDF Author: Jonathan A. Obar
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 0823271668
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description
Media reform plays an increasingly important role in the struggle for social justice. As battles are fought over the future of investigative journalism, media ownership, spectrum management, speech rights, broadband access, network neutrality, the surveillance apparatus, and digital literacy, what effective strategies can be used in the pursuit of effective media reform? Prepared by thirty-three scholars and activists from more than twenty-five countries, Strategies for Media Reform focuses on theorizing media democratization and evaluating specific projects for media reform. This edited collection of articles offers readers the opportunity to reflect on the prospects for and challenges facing campaigns for media reform and gathers significant examples of theory, advocacy, and activism from multinational perspectives.