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Alternative media, diasporas and the mediation of the Zimbabwe crisis
Abstract
Historically, societies living under repressive regimes have always come up with alternative forms of communication as tools of subversion. While underground newspapers and ‘pirate radio’ have been some of the most common forms, the advent of new communication technologies in recent years has brought new forms of alternative media with greater possibilities for transnational and even wider citizen participation and empowerment. This study starts from the premise that Zimbabwe's restricted democratic space has spawned a multiplicity of alternative public spheres that enable groups and individuals to continue to participate and engage in the wider debate on the mutating crisis gripping the country since the turn of the century. The paper looks at how Zimbabweans in the diaspora are creatively exploiting new media to resist state propaganda churned out through the mainstream media. The study analyses foreign-based news websites on Zimbabwe and seeks to ascertain the nature and extent of their contribution to the ongoing discourse on the Zimbabwe crisis. It looks at the organisational and production aspects of these alternative media, and how these affect their performance as alternative channels of discourse.
... The state-owned electronic media are dominant, including the only local Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporations Television (ZBC TV), and the four radio stations; namely the Classic 263, the Radio Zimbabwe, the Power FM and the National FM. While media laws allow equal access to these electronic platforms by all political players, the government has been accused of giving preferential treatment to the ruling ZANU-PF party while limiting access for opposition players (Thondhlana 2011;Moyo 2007;Chatora 2009). In election times, government of Zimbabwe is accused of suppressing access to state controlled media, including the radio stations, the ZTV and the Zimpapers newspapers for opposition political groups while giving the ruling party unlimited access (Mare 2018;Thondhlana 2011). ...
... The introduction of draconian pieces of legislation exacerbated the plight of opposition political parties. A list of these instruments include the Posts and Telecommunications Act of 2000, the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) and the Public Order and Security Act (POSA), all which are blamed for limiting media freedoms and its operation environment (Moyo 2007;Thondhlana 2011). Although the extent of the Posts and Telecommunications Act of 2000s' application is unknown, the detrimental effects of POSA and AIPPA to opposition leaders, media players and civic groups' resource mobilization, advocacy work and freedom of expression remains well documented (Chatora 2009;Moyo 2005;Moyo 2007;Thondhlana 2011). ...
... A list of these instruments include the Posts and Telecommunications Act of 2000, the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) and the Public Order and Security Act (POSA), all which are blamed for limiting media freedoms and its operation environment (Moyo 2007;Thondhlana 2011). Although the extent of the Posts and Telecommunications Act of 2000s' application is unknown, the detrimental effects of POSA and AIPPA to opposition leaders, media players and civic groups' resource mobilization, advocacy work and freedom of expression remains well documented (Chatora 2009;Moyo 2005;Moyo 2007;Thondhlana 2011). Journalists and political actors were harassed, arrested and detained after being accused of publishing falsehoods against the head of state and government. ...
... For example, while AIPPA, (contrary to its name), restricted easy access to government documents and information by the press, POSA essentially criminalised the journalism profession by introducing a long custodial sentence and hefty fines for journalists who were likely to cause public disorder or publish stories that risked engendering the hatred of either the president or the acting president of the country. Media freedom was further constrained by the use of threats, arrests, torture of journalists and the bombing of mostly private media's printing presses and offices (Moyo, 2007). This incapacitation and subsequent 'decapitation' of the mainstream media as watchdogs and custodians of the public good and active citizenship culminated in the development of alternative media platforms where citizens produced and disseminated news and told stories about the harsh realities of Zimbabwean life and politics. ...
... This incapacitation and subsequent 'decapitation' of the mainstream media as watchdogs and custodians of the public good and active citizenship culminated in the development of alternative media platforms where citizens produced and disseminated news and told stories about the harsh realities of Zimbabwean life and politics. In some cases, these spaces were also seminal to public discussions and thus became informal counter-hegemonic public spheres where public opinion could be formulated, nurtured and sustained (Moyo, 2007). As is normally the case in authoritarian environments, the Internet in Zimbabwe thus became the platform through which most of these subaltern or antistate discourses articulated and exerted themselves. ...
... When force dominates consent-making institutions such as in Zimbabwe, then the hegemonic grip of the elite on the masses would have slipped away thus opening an opportunity for the alternative media to become the new epicentres of hegemony for the resisting classes. Moyo (2007) coins the term 'alternative-mainstream' to describe Zimbabwe's phenomenon of a gradual shift by the subaltern from the fringes of public participation into the centre of the national public sphere (See Moyo, 2007). Beverly Clarke, one of the main bloggers argued that "I get the sense that a lot of Zimbabweans who are connected use sites such as Newzimbabwe, Kubatana, and others to get their news, opinion and other information rather than established newspaper websites" (Interview, 29 January 2010). ...
This article examines the use of blogs to mediate the experiences of citizens during a violentelection in Zimbabwe. It focuses specifically on how people disseminated and shared informationabout their tribulations under a regime that used coercive measures in the face of its crumblinghegemonic edifice. The article frames these practices within theories of alternative media andcitizen journalism and argues that digitisation has occasioned new counter-hegemonic spacesand new forms of journalism that are deinstitutionalised and deprofessionalised, and whoseradicalism is reflected in both form and content. I argue that this radicalism in part articulates apostmodern philosophy and style as seen in its rejection of the elaborate codes and conventionsof mainstream journalism. The Internet is seen as certainly enhancing the people’s right tocommunicate, but only to a limited extent because of access disparities, on the one hand, and itsappropriation by liberal social movements whose configuration is elitist, on the other. I concludeby arguing that the alternative media in Zimbabwe, as reflected by Kubatana’s bloggers, lack thecapacity to envision alternative social and political orders outside the neo-liberal framework. This,I contend, is partly because of the political economy of both blogging as a social practice andalternative media as subaltern spaces. Just as the bloggers are embedded to Kubatana’s virtualspace to self-publish, Kubatana is likewise embedded to a neo-liberal discourse that is traceableto its funding and financing systems.
... For suppressed communities like Zimbabweans in the diaspora and in their homeland, the Internet is the safest and most reliable platform (Moyo 2009) for effectively (re)producing competing notions of nationalism (Peel 2009) and identity from below (Khalidi 2010, xiii). Studies on the social media have proven the central role social media, in the form of dozens of diasporic Zimbabwean websites and radio stations, play as alternative sources of information and expression that serve both the diaspora and homeland populations (Mano and Willems 2006;Moyo 2007;Peel 2009). ...
... Research in Zimbabwe (Mano and Willems 2008;Moyo 2007Moyo , 2009Peel 2009) and elsewhere (Bernal 2006;Chan 2005;Laguerre 2005;Shuval 2000) reveals that new media play an important role by acting as 'connective tissue' among diasporeans, with some online activities culminating in social or political activities and opening up restricted democratic space, while resisting state propaganda. Newzimbabwe.com ...
... Newzimbabwe.com was launched in June 2003 by five former Zimbabwean journalists (Moyo 2007). It caters for the homeland as well as the burgeoning population of diaspora communities, which numbers anything between 3.4 and 4.5 million (Kanu 2010;Landau 2008;Terera 2008). ...
... We thus, here in this chapter, discuss the manners in which the internet has challenged these ZANU PF elitistdominated domestic public spheres and created a sphere where ordinary citizens interact among themselves and those in power (Mpofu, n.d.). Moyo (2007), reflecting on this condition and how it birthed the rise of a communal reliance on the digital alternative media in Zimbabwe, opines that: ...
... For most Zimbabweans during this period and beyond, the internet offered an alternative digital public sphere where ordinary citizens could "meet" (virtually, of course) and discuss issues they are not typically able to discuss within the ZANU PF government-controlled public spheres. This is due to the promulgation and existence of regimes of control which make it impossible to have open discussion on topics of governance, maladministration, the economy as well as political participation which have been tabooed (Moyo, 2007;Mpofu, n.d.). In addition, the fact that the Zimbabwean public media, which was largely government controlled, was stifling vibrant debate that speaks against state programmes meant that people were technically, perpetually in the dark. ...
This chapter reflects upon the representation of socio-economic and religio-political polemics in Winky D’s two songs, ‘Parliament’ released 2018 and ‘Ibotso’ in 2023. The selected songs are prisms through which this chapter contends that the artists do not only articulate existential precarity of the common citizens in Zimbabwe’s ‘Ghetto’ space but also offer modes of resistance by speaking truth to power in the context of 2023 electoral politics. The contempt of power is reinforced by the profoundly discernable tropes of commandment, conviviality, social death, violence, a deeply fractured society and a bewildering inter-generational precarity, which continue to define the lives of the ordinary people. Together, these motifs fortify the artist’s voice that scoffs at post-Mugabe political leadership. The study also validates Foucault’s view that power dynamically interlocks both the agents and subjects in very complex ways particularly in the context of rested transition in contemporary Zimbabwe. The study is located within the interdisciplinary contours of Cultural Linguistics (CL) and Achille Mbembe’s political thought in his formulation of the postcolony. Most significantly, this study examines how the songs enable a discursive space in which the socio-economic and religio-political dialectics can be highlighted. The choice of these conceptual frameworks is informed by an awareness that the studied songs are historically contingent. The study concludes that contrary to the view that Zimdancehall music lacks semantic relevance to the Zimbabwean society, the studied songs convey a reluctance to accept artists’ freedom of speech, a characteristic that speaks about a persistent haunting aura of autocratic political culture. They further make an urgent call for an alternative socio-political rationality for the emancipatory trajectory towards a reimagined future. Indeed, the importance of this music genre to socio-political life should not be underrated.KeywordsCommandmentConvivialityCultural linguisticsElectoral politicsMelancholiaPostcolonyZimdancehall music
... We thus, here in this chapter, discuss the manners in which the internet has challenged these ZANU PF elitistdominated domestic public spheres and created a sphere where ordinary citizens interact among themselves and those in power (Mpofu, n.d.). Moyo (2007), reflecting on this condition and how it birthed the rise of a communal reliance on the digital alternative media in Zimbabwe, opines that: ...
... For most Zimbabweans during this period and beyond, the internet offered an alternative digital public sphere where ordinary citizens could "meet" (virtually, of course) and discuss issues they are not typically able to discuss within the ZANU PF government-controlled public spheres. This is due to the promulgation and existence of regimes of control which make it impossible to have open discussion on topics of governance, maladministration, the economy as well as political participation which have been tabooed (Moyo, 2007;Mpofu, n.d.). In addition, the fact that the Zimbabwean public media, which was largely government controlled, was stifling vibrant debate that speaks against state programmes meant that people were technically, perpetually in the dark. ...
This chapter discusses the morbidities in Zimbabwe’s transformational politics in the post-Mugabe era by examining the campaign proclamations by Emmerson Mnangagwa on one side and those by Nelson Chamisa on the other. Of particular focus in this chapter is an argument that both Mnangagwa and Chamisa have opted for populist politics that conceal certain morbidities that expose Zimbabwean politics as elitist but neither people centred nor nationalistic at the core. While the post-November 2017 political phase witnessed the most hilarious moments of Zimbabwean politics after 1980, the transformational phase is noted for its rudimentary elements of euphemistic oppression of the public to achieve elitist goals by both Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and the Movement for Democratic Change-Alliance (MDC-A). Drawing its discursive praxes from the Agenda setting theory and its concept of framing, the chapter also adds another segment to include and discuss accusations and counter-accusations between the two political formations on the root cause of Zimbabwe’s economic woes: sanctions or corruption. Methodologically, data is gathered through selection of key purposive texts in the form of campaign manifestos that insinuate ideological innuendos in the Zimbabwean political context. These manifestos are analysed through textual analysis to unpack their signifying values and establish how their ambiguities blindfolded the electorate. The chapter concludes that failure to find common ground by the two main political nemeses exposes political insincerity as the public continues to suffer while the leadership trade accusations and counter-accusations to score a political agenda. The endless debate on whether corruption or sanctions are the causes of Zimbabwe’s economic woes is also an indication of political polarisation. Such dialectics leave a fundamental and troubling question of whether the pending 2023 harmonised elections will bear fruits of peace, development and democracy.KeywordsAgenda setting theoryFramingMorbidityNationalistPolarisationTransformational politics
... We thus, here in this chapter, discuss the manners in which the internet has challenged these ZANU PF elitistdominated domestic public spheres and created a sphere where ordinary citizens interact among themselves and those in power (Mpofu, n.d.). Moyo (2007), reflecting on this condition and how it birthed the rise of a communal reliance on the digital alternative media in Zimbabwe, opines that: ...
... For most Zimbabweans during this period and beyond, the internet offered an alternative digital public sphere where ordinary citizens could "meet" (virtually, of course) and discuss issues they are not typically able to discuss within the ZANU PF government-controlled public spheres. This is due to the promulgation and existence of regimes of control which make it impossible to have open discussion on topics of governance, maladministration, the economy as well as political participation which have been tabooed (Moyo, 2007;Mpofu, n.d.). In addition, the fact that the Zimbabwean public media, which was largely government controlled, was stifling vibrant debate that speaks against state programmes meant that people were technically, perpetually in the dark. ...
This volume entitled, Electoral Politics in Zimbabwe Volume 2: The 2023 Election and Beyond, is the second in a two-part series. The main thrust of the two volumes is to reflect on the multifaceted factors impacting electoral politics in Zimbabwe. The twofold series foregrounds the importance of undertaking research on electoral politics in Zimbabwe. This is propelled by the reality of the fact that in this Southern African state, like in most developing states globally, the socio-economic milieu revolves around the prevailing political environment. For instance, whenever there is peace and tranquillity, there will be socio-economic growth and people’s lives will be flourishing. Conversely, lack of democracy, misgovernance and corruption are synonymous with poverty, stagnation, inflation, strife and unabated humanitarian crises. The two volumes complement each other. Volume one focused on three thematic areas. The first thematic area focused on the electoral environment in Zimbabwean politics. Language, politics and elections in Zimbabwe were the second thematic areas. The third segment deliberated on the nexus of electoral institutions and human rights in Zimbabwean politics. Proceeding from where volume one ended, the contributors to this volume reverberate the nexus of three entwined themes, highlighting how these thematic areas have a huge bearing on electoral politics. The first part brings to the fore the interface between gender and electoral politics in Zimbabwe. The second segment reflects on the role of the media in Zimbabwe’s electoral politics. The third part examines the role of traditional leaders in Zimbabwe’s electoral politics. Some of the chapters in this volume proffer possible ways of resolving the various challenges precipitating the volatile electoral environment, and they advocate for a transformed electoral environment in anticipation of the famed formative 2023 harmonized elections. The analysis and recommendations proffered in this volume will broaden the readers’ understanding of electoral politics in Zimbabwe and by extension African politics from a broad range of related perspectives.Keywords2023 harmonized electionsElectoral politicsGenderMediaZimbabwean politics
... Grady Walker's (2018) argument that alternative 'ways of knowing' are often derided can be extended to the manner by which the Zimbabwean state and its affiliates respond to widespread criticism, including satire by creative collectives. This study complements work on alternatives to mainstream media in Zimbabwe, such as Wendy Willems' (2008) analysis of comic strips and Dumisani Moyo's (2007) study of foreign websites that report on Zimbabwe. In recent years, several online-based movements dabbling in mobile journalism, citizen journalism and 'cellphilm' have emerged in Zimbabwe. ...
... Just like the state-controlled Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation Television (ZBCTV), the content of these broadcasters might be designed to prop up ZANU PF hegemony. As if this were not enough, privately owned media have to be extra cautious before publishing sensitive stories (Moyo, 2007). It has also been noted that filmmakers avoid overtly political subjects in their productions (Mhiripiri, 2010). ...
This proposed volume would fill a much-needed gap in media anthropology and media studies, and the individual chapters would also be relevant to courses and research on ethnographic methods, globalization, migration, and gender studies."-Keyan G. Tomaselli, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa "As a subfield largely dependent on portraying cultural Otherness-an impulse revived by the emergence of indigenous cinema over the last four decades-this volume paves new paths to take vernacular productions seriously."-Xavier Andrade, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia
... Grady Walker's (2018) argument that alternative 'ways of knowing' are often derided can be extended to the manner by which the Zimbabwean state and its affiliates respond to widespread criticism, including satire by creative collectives. This study complements work on alternatives to mainstream media in Zimbabwe, such as Wendy Willems' (2008) analysis of comic strips and Dumisani Moyo's (2007) study of foreign websites that report on Zimbabwe. In recent years, several online-based movements dabbling in mobile journalism, citizen journalism and 'cellphilm' have emerged in Zimbabwe. ...
... Just like the state-controlled Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation Television (ZBCTV), the content of these broadcasters might be designed to prop up ZANU PF hegemony. As if this were not enough, privately owned media have to be extra cautious before publishing sensitive stories (Moyo, 2007). It has also been noted that filmmakers avoid overtly political subjects in their productions (Mhiripiri, 2010). ...
Comic outfits Magamba Network, Bustop TV and P.O Box have gained popularity for their creative forms of youth activism in which they produce and disseminate, via social media, skits about ‘everyday’ issues in Zimbabwe. The chapter examines skits produced by the outfits, raising critical questions about external interference by professionalised, institutionalised and politicised commissioning agencies that paradoxically amplify and trivialise the subaltern’s representational agency. Methodologically, data is collected through archival collection of selected skits and interviews with the art activists (artivists). The data is subjected to thematic analysis. The chapter argues that external funding for the activities of these outfits creates a conundrum in that while it offers an assured means of sustainability, it also curtails creativity.
... In Zimbabwe, the internet is an alternative news forum for interaction and information consumption where participants freely participate without restrictions (Moyo 2009). The news sites on internet provide people with alternative sources of information, which was beforehand restricted to the registered media companies in Zimbabwe (Mano and Willems 2006;Moyo 2007;Peel 2009). The internet has also played a role in assembling the population in diaspora and in the homeland to interact and share opinions on social media, wikis, blogs and news feedback forums. ...
... It is viewed as the biggest website that covers current Zimbabwean issues and it is the first website online publication formed by Zimbabweans abroad (Mpofu 2013). It was launched online in 2003 by former Zimbabwean journalists (Moyo 2007) and has a professional layout with frequently updated news. ...
The Internet has a variety of media outlets which promotes users’ interaction and participation on
news discussion forums. Thus the reader’s interaction on the commentary forum has developed into a discursive online communities that experience the interaction of old members and the continual influx of new members. Therefore, this paper analyses the connectivity and interaction of participants in a political online community found on the readers’ commentary forum attached to NewZimbabwe.com. The paper uses mainly network analysis to explore the interaction of the online community members or news readers by sampling a total number of 212 commenters. The findings of this paper assert that the discursive nature of the readers’ online community is argumentative, abusive and sometimes sarcastic. The news readers’ interaction is stimulated by commenters’ online personality traits, shared interests in the topic and messages that are offensive or provocative.
... In Zimbabwe, the internet is an alternative news forum for interaction and information consumption where participants freely participate without restrictions (Moyo 2009). The news sites on internet provide people with alternative sources of information, which was beforehand restricted to the registered media companies in Zimbabwe ( Mano and Willems 2006;Moyo 2007;Peel 2009). The internet has also played a role in assembling the population in diaspora and in the homeland to interact and share opinions on social media, wikis, blogs and news feedback forums. ...
... It is viewed as the biggest website that covers current Zimbabwean issues and it is the first website online publication formed by Zimbabweans abroad (Mpofu 2013). It was launched online in 2003 by former Zimbabwean journalists(Moyo 2007)and has a professional layout with frequently updated news. ...
Web 2.0 technologies have promoted media audience interaction and participation, which was beforehand limited to traditional media through the letters that were sent to the editor and radio conversations. This paper studies the media audiences found on readers' public commentary forums attached to political and economic news articles. The paper implements a qualitative content analysis to analyze readers' perspectives on the political and economic situation in Zimbabwe by extracting comments found on NewZimbabwe.com, Herald.co.zw, Nehandaradio.com and Zimeye.com. This paper reveals that the perspectives of readers on political and economic issues are extremely contrary influenced by political or media polarization. The paper shows that readers' divergent views on the political economy are distributed amid the political opinions and roles played by either ZANU-PF or MDC.
... With the emergence of the internet, Zimbabwe now boasts of multiple online media outlets ranging from blogs to online radio stations (Moyo, 2007). These online media platforms were largely subaltern public spheres which uplifted and amplified the voice of the marginalised and peripheralised in Zimbabwe and examples include Studio 7, New Zimbabwe.com, ...
... In Zimbabwe's political landscape, digital platforms serve as alternative voices or counter-hegemonic sites (Matsilele and Ruhanya, 2020;Mpofu et al., 2023;. Digital tools such as news websites (Moyo, 2007), Twitter (Tshuma et al., 2023) and WhatsApp (Ndzinisa et al., 2021) are being utilised by users to counter government propaganda. Whilst these new digital tools are contributing to democratic cultures, there are notable challenges regarding the appropriation of these tools and these include a declining rate of Internet access, use and freedom (MISA, 2020). ...
Digital innovations are transforming newsroom practices across the globe. The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) tools is upending and altering newsmaking and news distribution practices. Whilst there is existing literature on the ever-changing journalism practices due to AI tools in the Global North, scholarship on how these digital innovations are shaping African newsrooms has remained scant. This study uses the case of Alice, an AI-powered newsreader in Zimbabwe, to explore the audience perceptions of this digital innovation. Drawing upon Afrokology, and cultural studies as theoretical frameworks, this qualitative study derived data through digital ethnography and in-depth interviews. Findings demonstrate that there are mixed feelings on the appropriation and use of AI-driven news anchors. On the one hand, some audiences applaud the use of AI news anchors as innovative storytelling techniques. On the other hand, audiences are concerned with Alice’s lack of human emotion, poor accent and perceive her as a threat to traditional journalists’ jobs. Some of the resistance towards Alice indicate a need for decolonising the AI tools in the newsrooms.
... While private media are still operational, albeit at a minimal level, social media platforms have managed to bridge the gap both in providing news through newsfeeds and offering a stage for activism, news ideas and news of activities and events unfolding in the country which journalists cannot afford to attend due to the economic strains newsrooms are facing. Moyo (2007) argues that private media in countries where the opposition is dysfunctional plays an oppositional role, and the same could be said of social media where traditional private media is mute or playing a somewhat compromised role of keeping the government in check notwithstanding its own limitations. ...
This chapter investigates whether (and in what ways) the decision by Malawi’s leading print newspapers, Times Group (Times) and Nation Publications Limited (NPL), to adopt the digital first strategy of news reporting has helped the news organizations to remain relevant and competitive in the fast-paced digital world. Both Times and NPL were quick to embrace technology and establish online desks in the early 2000s. The desks later became custodians of the digital first strategy designed to complement the print newspaper. This was to avert the competition posed by social media and to ensure their readers have access to timely and credible news while waiting for the print newspapers. While some stories are published online only, most news stories end up on the front pages of the print newspapers. This study focused on news stories that were first published on Facebook pages and later as front-page stories the following day. A total of fourteen news stories were sampled. Two news concepts: slow news and 24-hour news cycle, which explain the different mechanisms involved in live coverage of daily news for digital platforms and print newspapers, were employed to guide the investigations. The major finding is that the digital first strategy has helped the two media houses to remain relevant at a time social media have become the source of real-time news for the citizens. However, the tendency of publishing on front page news stories that made headlines on social media the previous day without adding value risks the future of the print newspapers.KeywordsDigital firstPrint newspapers24-hour news cycleSlow newsScoopsMalawi
... While private media are still operational, albeit at a minimal level, social media platforms have managed to bridge the gap both in providing news through newsfeeds and offering a stage for activism, news ideas and news of activities and events unfolding in the country which journalists cannot afford to attend due to the economic strains newsrooms are facing. Moyo (2007) argues that private media in countries where the opposition is dysfunctional plays an oppositional role, and the same could be said of social media where traditional private media is mute or playing a somewhat compromised role of keeping the government in check notwithstanding its own limitations. ...
This chapter looks at how Zimbabwe’s diasporic media has appropriated social media for its news production, dissemination and sustainability purposes. Diasporic media here refers to media organisations established and run by Zimbabweans living outside Zimbabwe. Most of these Zimbabweans are former journalists who fled the country due to the constricted democratic space. These diasporic news media organisations cover issues about Zimbabwe and Zimbabweans in the diaspora. A secondary interest advanced in this study is the normative role played by diasporic media in mediating Zimbabwe’s complex political environment. The study addresses three critical questions. First, how is diaspora media employing social media for its news value chain? Second, what can be derived from the content of the selected case in determining the normative role of the diasporic media? And third, to what extent is the business model of diaspora media sustainable. In order to understand the phenomenon of the diasporic media, we analyse Nehanda Radio through a qualitative study that investigates the relationship between social media and diasporic media outlets. Nehanda Radio prides itself as a Zimbabwean radio station that provides 24-hour running news on their website and during broadcasts. It also claims to provide breaking news as it happens via its popular e-mail alert system which listeners and readers can subscribe to. Methodologically, we rely on desktop study. Theoretically, we use a combination of agenda setting and the political economy.KeywordsSocial mediaTajamuka/Sesijikile#ThisFlag movementPastor Evan MawarireZimbabweRobert MugabeNehanda RadioAgenda settingSubalternity
... Within the "culture of authoritarianism" (Moyo, 2012:485), Internet tools such as podcasting enable activists and ordinary people to articulate alternative viewpoints. Dominant literature demonstrates the role of diasporic news websites (Mano & Willems, 2010;Moyo, 2007;Mpofu, 2014), email listservs (Mhlanga & Mpofu, 2014), and Twitter (Gukurume, 2017) as spaces for expressing counterhegemonic discourses. We develop this scholarship by focusing on podcasting as a space for subaltern voices in Zimbabwe. ...
This chapter examines how the youth in Zimbabwe are using podcasting tools to create and disseminate content that articulate their concerns. The rise of participatory media such as podcasting is transforming communicative practices across the globe. As a new form of storytelling, podcasting is shaping the production, dissemination, and consumption of knowledge for democratic engagements. Drawing upon Robert Asen’s concept of subaltern counterpublics, we examine how content creators, community reporters, citizen journalists, and so on in Zimbabwe are utilising the opportunities offered by podcasting technologies and platforms to participate and tell the stories of young people. Given that podcasting offers the means for participation, representation, and cultural citizenship, we explore how the youth are involved in the production of content in ways that are widening the democratic cultures in the country. Data were drawn from a network of young podcasters who have been trained by Bulawayo-based media-related organisations such as the Centre for Innovation and Technology (CITE) and Internews. Through interviews with selected podcast hosts and an analysis of their podcast content, we argue that podcasting reinvigorates the democratic environment in Zimbabwe by offering an alternative space for the youth to articulate their grievances. However, the exorbitant data costs and the digital divide in the country are undermining the opportunities offered by these podcasting technologies.
... Within the "culture of authoritarianism" (Moyo, 2012:485), Internet tools such as podcasting enable activists and ordinary people to articulate alternative viewpoints. Dominant literature demonstrates the role of diasporic news websites (Mano & Willems, 2010;Moyo, 2007;Mpofu, 2014), email listservs (Mhlanga & Mpofu, 2014), and Twitter (Gukurume, 2017) as spaces for expressing counterhegemonic discourses. We develop this scholarship by focusing on podcasting as a space for subaltern voices in Zimbabwe. ...
This chapter was designed to investigate how the Nigerian youth—the largest age group in the country—deploy social media platforms to consume radio content on topical public issues to establish the intermediality of radio broadcasting and social media in driving the national renaissance. While Media Dependency and Democratic Participant theories formed the theoretical framework, we combined survey and Focus Group Discussion (FGD) as research methods. One hundred and fifteen copies of the online survey questionnaire were administered to youths, while five sessions of FGD were held with select young people who used social media and listened to the radio. The findings revealed that radio is still a popular news medium among the youth. Also, the study established that social media, via their capacity for wide reach, cost-effectiveness, and multimodality, have rather enhanced the significance of radio than undermined its efficiency as an agent of national reawakening and cohesion. Therefore, given the fact that every social change is usually youth-driven across climes, social media and radio must be deployed in synergy for better youth participation in the national discourse.
... It was initially produced and disseminated in the United Kingdom, but eventually it was also distributed in Zimbabwe and other neighbouring countries. Apart from these 'old' media, Zimbabweans increasingly began to profile themselves through a range of websites mostly set up by former journalists (Moyo, 2007). Examples include: ...
New forms of online citizen journalism have refreshed political communication in Africa. Newinformation technologies are providing readers with previously unavailable opportunities tocomment and produce their own news and information that is able to influence political processes.However, all is not rosy about Africa’s new citizen journalism. While it has produced reliable andquality information that African democracies require, it has also produced vigilante journalism - avindictive and revengeful form of gathering and disseminating news and information. Vigilantejournalism is similar to the necklacing that was common in South African in the 1980s. The articlediscusses how, at the height of the Zimbabwe crisis (2007-2008), the news website, ZimDaily, leda vigilante campaign to publicly name and have perceived relatives and children of Zimbabweanruling party officials deported from ‘Western’ countries. The idea was to help resolve the politicaland economic crises in Zimbabwe. The editors refused to question the ethics and morality ofthe exercise. Thus, encouraged by the website’s editors, Zimbabwean users of the website tookthe law in their own hands and published addresses, telephone numbers and other personalinformation about anyone thought to be related to those in government in Zimbabwe. This blurredthe boundaries between citizen and vigilante journalism. The resultant vigilante journalism bygroups seeking instant justice was in a way similar to the necklacing, even though this was in avirtual sense. It is clear that the emerging new media spaces in Africa function like double-edgedswords able to either build or destroy democracy.
... Mhiripiri and Mutsvairo (2014) argue that users sought for international support for the formation of the 2009 Government of National Unity (GNU) through social media activism in Zimbabwe. Research has shown that social media creates an alternative communication platform for Zimbabweans in the diaspora (Moyo, 2007). Thus, researchers seem to have given more attention to the debate on whether social media reinforce political participation particularly among Zimbabweans in their homeland. ...
... Alternative media are historically associated with marginalised people and societies living under repressive regimes (Moyo, 2010), wherein they operate in opposition to or in tension with mainstream media often encouraging radical participation of citizens and pushing for democratisation. Because Zimbabwe has a restricted democratic space, it has a significant alternative or independent media sector that enable groups and individuals to participate and engage in the wider debate on the mutating crisis gripping the country since the turn of the century (Moyo,2010). ...
Zimbabwe has a tainted media history under Mugabe replete with examples of state orchestrated repression, draconian legislation, harassment of journalists and violation of their work premises. The post-November 2017 coup period is a critical reference point to understand the political economy of alternative media under the so-called ‘New Dispensation’ of President Mnangagwa with its promises of prodemocracy reforms. Using political economy as a theoretical approach that analyses media systems in a holistic manner by linking them to politics, economy, legislation and technology, this study assesses the extent to which the ‘New Dispensation’ has implemented political economy reforms that impact alternative media. Drawing from interviews with selected alternative media journalists and proprietors, the findings reveal that alternative media in Zimbabwe remain entrenched in repression and are in a crisis caused by an exacerbation of the same structural factors that existed before. The ‘New Dispensation’ has instead led to the entrenchment of a new dictatorship by the military junta. Undue political interference, a fragile economy and state orchestrated repression continue to constrain the democratic functions of alternative media. By teasing the continuities and discontinuities of alternative media repression during the Mugabe era and under the ‘New Dispensation’, the paper contributes to ongoing debates about the consequence of the 2017 coup and the need for genuine democratic reforms in Zimbabwe post-Mugabe epoch.
... Thus, the Internet has a subversive potential as news websites , the Forum social networking mailing list (Mhlanga & Mpofu, 2014) and Inkundla online platform (Moyo, 2009b) were appropriated by users to construct Ndebele historical memories such as the Gukurahundi genocide. Studies have examined the role of diasporic media as alternative public spheres that played a role in mediating the Zimbabwean crises (Moyo, 2007;Mano & Willems, 2008). Zimbabwean activists in the diaspora are using humour not "merely to mock or ridicule but to conscientize people, and to raise attention for and awareness of the situation" in the homeland (Kuhlmann, 2012, 295). ...
At the end of 2019, the world was engulfed by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) that interrupted life as we had known it. The virus was believed to have originated from a Chinese district of Wuhan in the Hubei province. As the pandemic swept across the globe, people made different readings of its spread, effects and control. An infodemic ensued whereby some people discussed its cause, treatment and impact by sharing news, disseminating fake news, conspiracy theories and humorous memes. Most citizens in the Global South have experienced different kinds of crises such as leadership, environmental issues due to climate change, electoral violence, economic crises and corruption, among others. To negotiate some of these challenges gossip, fake news, conspiracy theories, ridicule and humour in the form of jokes and satire have been critical. This humour could be spread through cartoons in mainstream media or through alternative social media platforms (wo)maned by citizens now empowered to create, package and distribute content without the intervention of trained media professionals but with the risk of political leaders pouncing on deviants even in these clandestine public spheres.
... Thus, the Internet has a subversive potential as news websites , the Forum social networking mailing list (Mhlanga & Mpofu, 2014) and Inkundla online platform (Moyo, 2009b) were appropriated by users to construct Ndebele historical memories such as the Gukurahundi genocide. Studies have examined the role of diasporic media as alternative public spheres that played a role in mediating the Zimbabwean crises (Moyo, 2007;Mano & Willems, 2008). Zimbabwean activists in the diaspora are using humour not "merely to mock or ridicule but to conscientize people, and to raise attention for and awareness of the situation" in the homeland (Kuhlmann, 2012, 295). ...
Is it okay to meme and laugh during the pandemic? What does laughter mean amidst moments of crises? This research explores laughter during health disasters and pandemics. It takes particular focus at the case of listeriosis and COVID-19 which both affected South Africa while only the latter affected Zimbabwe. The comparative study explores the use of memes in the two countries as important tools in health communication revealing, among other things, citizens’ fear of death, despondency as Black Social Media used its digital leisure, spaces and resources to challenge the system, that is, White monopoly capital and industry by critiquing the system via laughter and uncomfortable memes and commentary. Internet memes remain a central language in the digitally colonized space of human communication, and interaction help society critique, question, desensitize, rebel and correct itself. It also allows power to escape, play along or threaten the subjects and citizens, depending on the depth of citizenship in a given state.
... Thus, the Internet has a subversive potential as news websites , the Forum social networking mailing list (Mhlanga & Mpofu, 2014) and Inkundla online platform (Moyo, 2009b) were appropriated by users to construct Ndebele historical memories such as the Gukurahundi genocide. Studies have examined the role of diasporic media as alternative public spheres that played a role in mediating the Zimbabwean crises (Moyo, 2007;Mano & Willems, 2008). Zimbabwean activists in the diaspora are using humour not "merely to mock or ridicule but to conscientize people, and to raise attention for and awareness of the situation" in the homeland (Kuhlmann, 2012, 295). ...
Not only did the COVID-19 pandemic infect large parts of the world’s population, but it also affected the mass media and the internet. The pandemic has gone viral on the internet. On one hand, COVID-19 is frequently concerned with “i-memes”, or social media-based memes (also known as internet memes), a popular form of communication among users. How do these internet memes comment on the COVID-19 pandemic? This question will be answered through influential examples that reflect the crisis discourse. The COVID-19 pandemic also generated viral hoaxes, fake news, misinformation and puns regarding the origin, scale, prevention, diagnosis and treatment of the virus, a phenomenon the World Health Organization describes as “infodemic”. Using a critical review of literature based on a thematic approach, this chapter analyses the common “conspiracy theory” associated with the COVID-19 pandemic circulated on social media platforms.
... Thus, the Internet has a subversive potential as news websites , the Forum social networking mailing list (Mhlanga & Mpofu, 2014) and Inkundla online platform (Moyo, 2009b) were appropriated by users to construct Ndebele historical memories such as the Gukurahundi genocide. Studies have examined the role of diasporic media as alternative public spheres that played a role in mediating the Zimbabwean crises (Moyo, 2007;Mano & Willems, 2008). Zimbabwean activists in the diaspora are using humour not "merely to mock or ridicule but to conscientize people, and to raise attention for and awareness of the situation" in the homeland (Kuhlmann, 2012, 295). ...
The world over, by no doubt, came to halt due to coronavirus disease (COVID-19)—the worst pandemic to be experienced in the twenty-first century. The virus was initially reported in late December 2019 in Wuhan, China, and spread across the globe. This pandemic has pushed countries into recessions, forcing sudden severe restrictions and curfews to people’s everyday lives. These restrictions have introduced new social life-styles such as social distancing, quarantining and regular use of hand sanitizers. The virus forced countries, corporate organisations and institutions into a new way of implementing work. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been the general playfulness about the virus that has seen an outpouring of memes and gags on social media platforms that invite academic scrutiny. In this chapter, we consider how humour has been used as a means of communicating indigenous ways of boosting the immune system and treating COVID-19 pandemic. We consider how memes gave people a sense of power to comment on prescribed treatments for the COVID-19 virus. Findings show that memes were used to challenge vaccines, commercialise indigenous herbs such as Zumbani/umsuzwane and constitute a social commentary on COVID-19 indigenous herbs.
... In Zimbabwe's repressive political environment, new media such as diasporic news websites are providing an arena for dissent voices (Moyo 2007). Given the "shrinking" of the democratic space, new media technologies are providing space for alternative discourses that challenge ZANU PF's authoritarianism (Moyo 2007, 82). ...
New Information and Communication Technologies (NICTs) are transforming newsmaking practices and journalistic cultures across the globe. Although factors such as lack of Internet access and prohibitive costs are constraining the adoption of these interactive digital technologies in most African countries, journalists are creatively appropriating these digital tools in their everyday professional work. Informed by the concept of journalism culture and the social constructionist approach to technology, this article examines the lived experiences of Zimbabwean journalists covering the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19). Drawing upon the first-hand accounts of 21 journalists covering this pandemic, this study explores the adoption and appropriation of digital technologies in their newsmaking practices. Despite challenges of resources such as finances, internet access and lack of protective gear, Zimbabwean journalists increasingly relied on interactive digital tools such as WhatsApp and Twitter to generate story ideas, conduct diary meetings, and for virtual sourcing.
... However, for exile media physical proximity to events is by definition not possible. Instead they rely on ICTs and social networks as a means to contact sources, reach audiences and establish journalistic authority (Moyo, 2007;Ndlela, 2009;Oyeleye, 2017;Skjerdal, 2011). For example, during the rule of the military Junta in Burma, exile media used the Internet to establish a public sphere for disseminating news about Burma to domestic and international audiences, and to facilitate communication between civil society groups inside and outside of the country (Dukalskis, 2018;Pidduck, 2012). ...
Tibet is one of the most restrictive places in the world for press freedom, with information online and offline tightly controlled and censored by the Chinese government. Foreign correspondents are restricted from travelling to and reporting in Tibetan areas, while Tibetans who act as sources are often persecuted. Despite this level of repression, Tibetans still find ways to tell the rest of the world what is happening in Tibet. This paper explores how it is possible to authoritatively report on events in one of the world’s most restrictive places for press freedom. Instead of relying on a single individual or news organisation, we find that reporting is conducted through journalistic networks consisting of sources in Tibet, Tibetan exile journalists, and source intermediaries called ‘communicators’. Based on fieldwork and semi-structured interviews with Tibetan journalists and communicators we explore how they develop and maintain journalistic authority, while being in exile and having to deal with severe constraints to press freedom.
... In this section, we argue that digital news platforms have assumed an increasingly legendary status in Zimbabwe. Moyo (2013) and Mabweazara (2018) have noted that digital news platforms have been appropriated in the post-2000 news environment of Zimbabwe as a response to the closure of the news spaces in Zimbabwe, especially for alternative voices. Moyo (2013, 23) noted that these platforms have been part of the "black market" for information, as "[Zimbabweans] continue to devise new communicative spaces outside the dominant state media empire and access alternative viewpoints from an array of emerging platforms". ...
Utilizing a constellation of conceptual tenets drawn from critical digital technology theory, field theory and concepts of digital democracy, this article argues that the post-coup period in Zimbabwe has solidified digital journalism practices in three main ways. These are: (i) the consolidation of a digital leak journalism culture, (ii) an increasingly ferocious form of digital guerrilla journalism, and (iii) the rise in popularity, of small digital-based news platforms that, arguably, are increasingly eclipsing already established mainstream (digital) news platforms as sources of news. These practices’ nascent roots have their genesis in the early 2000 period. In the post-coup context, they have assumed a new and wider meaning, and have become part of the mainstream. This solidification of digital journalism practices has consequently enabled journalists to “speak back” to power by providing robust forms of investigative journalism, and simultaneously avoiding being ‘swallowed’ by the state. While we admit to various gradations of digital journalism practices before the coup, we use the coup as our point of departure in order to factor in the incrementally disruptive and repressive political environment that has forced journalists to adopt digital journalism practices more than in any period of the country’s history.
... To some extent, Zambian online newspapers fulfil the ethos of new media in that their readers are not confined to communication channels and protocols determined by the authorities. Rather they are expected to be an alternative to state-controlled traditional media (Moyo, 2007) and therefore able to take control of the processes in ways that limit potential for censorship and internal controls. ...
... That social media makes it possible for people in controlled setting to share and receive of information reflects the platforms as facilitating freedoms of expression and of access to information, which are key ingredients of democracy. Thus, this study highlights the Internet as an alternative platform of expression (for both journalists and sources) in repressive environments as other research undertakings about ICTs and democratisation in Africa showed (Kupe, 2004;Mudhai, 2004;Moyo D, 2007Moyo D, , 2009). But we ought to keep our optimism about the Internet's abilities in check and bear in mind existing disparities in access to digital tools in Africa. ...
The article discusses the role of social media in relation to the traditional journalistic sphere in Uganda. Through an analysis of how journalists in three Ugandan newspapers use social media in their daily work, the article discusses how social media affect conventional sourcing practices, reportage and professional norms. The article is particularly interested in how Facebook and Twitter serve as alternative channels through which sources with less access to traditional means of communication get their message(s) across to journalists. The findings are discussed in light of the present development of social media legislation in Uganda. The discussions feed into a larger reflection on social media’s potential to create avenues of access in a semi-democratic setting where attempts to curtail media freedom and freedom of expression are frequent.
... They negotiate such negative media messages by establishing their particularistic media, which enable them to participate and engage in the wider debate on the conflict at home. An illustration of the role and influence of this diasporic media is noted in Moyo's (2007) study that 'they give a voice to the voiceless and articulate viewpoints that would otherwise not see the light of day under Zimbabwe's tightly controlled media environment' (Moyo 2007: 101). Furthermore, Ogunyemi (2017) argues that these media 'mediate conflicts by acting as a "window on the world" in providing up-to-date information and as a "mirror" in reflecting back to the audiences the consequences of conflict' (Ogunyemi 2017: 1). ...
People in the diaspora exhibit a dual identity, that is, an identity connected to their homeland and to their host country. This duality creates a constant tension, which could escalate into a crisis when they are exposed to negative messages about events at home such as conflict, political and economic instability and/or to negative messages about events in the host country such as unfavourable changes in immigration policy, physical attacks on group members and negative stereotyping in the mainstream media. This study focuses on the role of diasporic media in mediating identity crisis among black African diasporas. Adopting interview and critical discourse analysis methods, this study found that the African diasporic press de-escalates identity crisis by projecting African diasporas as ‘doers’ rather than as ‘villains’ in the news. But it fails to drastically reduce identity crisis because of a limited use of conflict-sensitive reporting criteria in news stories of African conflicts.
... There are scholarly works that explore the role of new media as emancipatory public spaces subverting the dominant ZANU PF nationalistic narratives (Moyo, 2007(Moyo, , 2009). However, there is a dearth of studies related to new media and the representation of Gukurahundi. ...
Studies on new media in Zimbabwe tend to highlight the role of news websites in widening the democratic space and countering the government’s hegemonic nationalist discourses that are perpetuated in state-controlled media. Scholars such as Mpofu and Mhlanga and Mpofu have argued that new media are emancipatory spaces that are enabling the people of Matabeleland to recollect memories of their painful past events that are repressed in official sites. Although these scholarly works have lauded new media as alternative sites that are subverting the hegemonic narratives propagated in state media, there remains a gap in studies that explore the role of news websites in reinforcing and preserving the official state discourses. This paper complements the works on the remembrance of the violent past events through new media by examining the discourses that seek to silence Gukurahundi memories. Using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as a method of data analysis, I examine news reports, opinion pieces and readers’ comments selected from Newzimbabwe.com and Bulawayo24.com news websites to capture the hegemonic discourses that seek to justify the Gukurahundi genocide.
... Les années 1990 ont vu l'intérêt des chercheurs en communication pour les médias communautaires s'accroître de manière très importante en Afrique de l'Ouest. Selon Moyo (2007), ce regain a partie liée avec la recherche sur les médias alternatifs développée dans les pays occidentaux. Le paradigme participatif présente les cinq caractéristiques suivantes: une attention à la culture locale; une sensibilité à la structure horizontale des interactions; la prise en compte de l'autonomisation (empowerment); la prise en compte de la possibilité de changement dans l'exercice du pouvoir; la primauté du local comme espace d'exercice de l'autonomie des populations (Servaes cité par white, 2009, p. 205-206). ...
West Africa, in this article, is used as an analytical framework for examining communication research from a diachronic perspective. The text is based on a literature review through which the author analyzed a corpus on West African work (articles in scientific journals, grey literature, and books on African communication research). After briefly sketching scientific production trends at the continental level, the author provides a historiography of West African communication research from the 1940s onwards. The substantial contribution of the subfield of philosophy of communication and the foundational orientation that it has lent to research, especially in the 1980s, are then reviewed in greater detail. Particular attention is paid to Francophone communication and gender research. Finally, the article identifies the discernible trends guiding the future agenda of communication research. Cet article prend l’Afrique de l’Ouest comme cadre pour analyser la recherche en communication. Il est base sur une revue de la litterature a travers laquelle l’auteur a etudie un corpus (articles de revues scientifiques, litterature grise et monographies) portant sur les travaux ouest-africains de recherche en communication. Apres un apercu des tendances de la production scientifique a l’echelle du continent africain, l’auteur passe en revue l’historiographie de la recherche ouest-africaine en communication et souligne l’importante contribution de la philosophie de la communication. Les thematiques, les methodologies et l’institutionnalisation de la recherche contemporaine en communication sont precises et une attention particuliere est portee aux specifites de la recherche francophone en communication et genre. L’article conclut en identifiant les tendances discernables quant au programme de la recherche en communication.
... Zimbabwean online newspapers are as diverse and fractured as their audience, comprising mainly of foreign-based, English language online newspapers and websites, satellite radios such as SW Radio and Studio, Internet radio and television stations, social networking sites, blogs and online shopping websites offering a variety of Zimbabweanproduced goods and services. News websites with a special focus on Zimbabwe (Moyo 2007) provide a virtual means for connecting the diaspora among themselves as well as with those at home and constitute the glue that holds Zimbabwean in the diaspora together (Witchel 2005). They have sections on opinion columns featuring prominent journalists, scholars and politicians both in and outside Zimbabwe, as well as entertainment news and business news. ...
The global dispersal of the Zimbabwean population at the turn of the century due to multi-layered crises coincided with the mushrooming of online news websites catering to the growing diaspora population. Technological innovations of the late 1990s, such as the Internet, spurred news organizations to introduce online versions of their newspapers. The introduction of stringent media laws by the ZANU-PF government, resulting in the closure of some newspapers and restructuring in the state media, also forced unemployed journalists to start online news websites catering to the bourgeoning diaspora population as well as those in the country (Mano and Willems, 2010). The phenomenal increase in the diaspora population, estimated to be about 3 million (Bloch, 2005), meant that online news sources became a ‘virtual discussion forum for Zimbabweans all over the world’ (Fitzmaurice, 2011, p. 8).
Post-2000, Zimbabwe has witnessed a gradual shrinking of communicative space. In its efforts to control the narrative about the causes of the country’s multi-dimensional crisis, the ruling ZANU-PF government has used a gamut of legal and extra-judicial strategies to stifle press and other related freedoms. In this highly restrictive context, comedy has emerged as a viable source of information about events unfolding in the country as well as an alternative public sphere where counter-hegemonic discourses are ventilated by citizens who were previously excluded from the mainstream public sphere. Building on Mpofu’s (2017) and Mano’s (2007) studies on art and music as variants of journalism, our paper argues that comedy should be viewed as a variant of journalism in post-2000 Zimbabwe. We employ the normative roles of journalism, and Nancy Fraser’s (1990) concept of the alternative public sphere as our framework for examining how comedy, and more specifically Comic Pastor’s Monthly Comic Awards, has filled the void created by mainstream journalism by performing the journalistic function of communicating salient issues during the protracted Zimbabwean crisis. Our findings converge with, and broaden, Mpofu’s (2017) and Mano’s (2007) thesis that alternative sources of expression such as comedy should be viewed as journalism in crisis contexts. These findings also reinforce the need to expand traditional conceptions of journalism that narrowly limit the practice to traditional mass media.
This chapter examines the manners in which web-based social media platforms have been extensively used as spaces for political campaigning and contestation in Zimbabwe, especially in the run up to the 2023 harmonised general elections. Within a political environment in which the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU PF)-led government has continuously put in place measures to subdue any political dissent and the proliferation of political discourses that are considered unfavourable to ZANU PF governance and hegemony, the chapter explores the power and significance of social media as alternative digital public spheres. ZANU PF has historically attempted to subvert any dissent through the promulgation of draconian laws that militate against the proliferation of the plurality of voices, ideologies and opinions—akin to undemocratic tendencies. The criminalisation of internet-based protests viewed to be hostile to ZANU PF’s hegemony, through the recent enactment of the Cyber and Data Protection Act of 2021 and the Patriotic Act of 2023, is testament to the levels to which the political party will go to maintain a hold on power. Through the Habermasian public sphere gaze, the chapter examines how the political actors in Zimbabwe have realised the potential of social media-based platforms as alternative avenues to provide counternarratives to ZANU PF’s propagandistic hegemonic discourses, in a political space that limits their activities within the mainstream public mass media, which is highly regulated by the ZANU PF government.KeywordsDigital public sphereHegemonyPolitical discourseSocial media
For feminist research, digital media now enable other ways of knowing currently lacking in mainstream research. Therefore, searching for African women's lived experiences in other sites, such as digital media spaces, requires the appropriation of methodologies that empower women. This article discusses the feminist approach of centring women as subaltern counterpublics, to show how this unearths the intersection of technology, power, hegemony, and subordination in the Zimbabwean context. The overall goal is to explain how the feminist counterpublics approach enables empirical findings on the emancipatory potential of blogs for Zimbabwean women. This research approach reveals how Zimbabwean women are using digital media as spaces to circulate counterdiscourses that resist their subjugation and the legitimation of power. Utilising the feminist approach to qualitative content analysis and semi-structured interviews, the study shows that communicative spaces online enable traditionally emasculated groups in Zimbabwe, particularly women, to reaffirm their identities and to begin to question the societal norms that continue to oppress them. This approach illustrates that blogs act as sites for regrouping and contestation, developing remedies for women's oppression, taking positions, and influencing wider publics.
This chapter studies forms of dissidentiality from the margins. By focusing on Baba Jukwa, #ThisFlag and #Tajamuka, the study attempts to argue for new spaces of protests that, historically, evolved from Humwe or nhimbe where citizens would challenge power in a semi-unregulated sphere. The chapter argues that these three archetypes of dissidents have and are in a constant war with the state in their bid to restore hunhu to citizens who for long were stripped of their agency by powerful political elites. Social media has allowed Zimbabwe’s subalterns to speak back to power on real time using either real identities or manufactured ones due to fear of victimisation.
Using the case study approach, this chapter examines ethical shortfalls confronting the media in the Internet era. The one case is drawn from a story published in The New York Times in 2015, while the other is a story published in a Zimbabwean newspaper, the Daily News. The objective was to broaden knowledge on how the Internet is impacting ethical practices in local and global political environments. The chapter argues that the Internet's architecture predisposes journalists to a host of unethical practices that were uncommon to the legacy media environment. Its immediacy exerts pressure on journalists to publish stories without adequate verification out of the fear of being “scooped” by competitors and citizen journalists who are less constrained to adhere to old-age journalistic ethics such as factual reporting and verification.
This article reviews the practice of ethical journalism in Zimbabwe. It reports on a study that engaged with both public and private journalists through in-depth interviews, to rethink ethical journalism in the worsening socio-economic and political situation in Zimbabwe. The study used thematic analysis informed by the communal approach or sociology of journalism ethics to analyse journalists’ perspectives. Several factors were found to be causes for unethical journalism practice, namely, political interference; poor economy; corruption; biased editorial policies; political activism; and interests of media owners or funders. The findings of the study reflect parallelism or antagonism between the public and private media in Zimbabwe. Therefore, the article calls for a common view based on the communal approach. It argues that social responsibility must be the norm in the face of corruption and economic challenges. An independent media body should be appointed by the Zimbabwean government to preside over the public media as the first step towards ethical journalism.
Online publications have become critical sites for the expression of views alternative to those of the state. This is true in Zimbabwe as in many developing states where the mainstream media operate under onerous legislative frameworks. However, the real impact of these ‘new public spheres’ on the country’s democratization agenda is subject to contestation. This chapter examines the impact of online publications run by exiled Zimbabwean journalists on the country’s democratization process. The chapter evaluates the extent to which these online publications constitute genuine alternative spaces for the mediation of national discourses. Data is elicited through focus group interviews, in-depth interviews, and textual analysis. The chapter argues that a combination of technical, social, and economic factors which limit Internet access and professional shortcomings conspire against online publications becoming genuine alternative public spheres, thus minimizing their role in the democratization of the Zimbabwean state.
This book focuses on news silence in Zimbabwe, taking as a point of departure the (in)famous blank spaces (whiteouts) which newspapers published to protest official censorship policy imposed by the Rhodesian government from the mid-1960s to the end of that decade.
Based on archived news content, the author investigates the cause(s) of the disappearance of blank spaces in Zimbabwe’s newspapers and establishes whether and how the blank spaces may have been continued by stealth and proposes a model of doing journalism where news is inclusive, just and less productive of blank spaces. The author explores the broader ramifications of news silences, tacit or covert on society’s sense of the world and their place in it. It questions whether and how news media continued with the practice of epistemic deletions and continue to draw on the colonial archive for conceptual maps with which to define and interpret contemporary postcolonial realities and challenges in Zimbabwe.
This book will be of interest to scholars, researchers and academics researching the press in contemporary Africa, critical media analysis, media and society studies, and news as discourse.
Starting in the 1990s, calls for ‘transformation’ in Zimbabwean cricket gained momentum, reaching a crescendo in the period between 1999 and 2005. While racial representativeness was a rallying call among advocates of transformation, the coalitions formed were in some cases very fluid. The major reason for this is that numerous struggles played out among and between groups resulting in continuous reconfigurations among key players. Using Zimbabwean cricket’s experience in the post-2000 period as well as drawing similarities with the indigenization lobby, this article highlights the flaws within the transformation agenda. In short, it argues that transformation falls short where it is framed in teleological terms instead of being structured as a process.
Over the past decade, Kenyan citizens have actively engaged in public communication through digital media. With the growth of digital communication, questions arise about its effect on the nature and political significance of public discussion. Does the political contribution of public discussion shift if it takes place on a virtual site or in a face-to-face gathering? Examining the context of Mombasa, Kenya, this paper provides a unique perspective into how and why there is cause for concern about the political implications of Facebook-mediated discussion. It interrogates the extent to which Facebook provides for discussion that is capable of reshaping shared imaginaries among Kenyans. To do this, I first outline the specific form that publicity takes on Facebook, taking into account both its openness and limitations. Second, I analyse what this has meant for the reconfiguration of shared political imaginaries. Drawing on the case of the public Facebook group, Mombasa Youth Senate, I argue that the conditions of Facebook create an open space that provides a great deal of flexibility in how people can appear and be recognised. However, this open and flexible experience frustrates the emergence of new and shared ideas of difference and belonging. In this case, Facebook’s underlying structures combined with user experiences are reinforcing rather than reconfiguring established ideas of citizen-state relations. © 2018
Traditional approaches to electronic democracy put strong emphasis on rationality and formal reasoning, disallowing space for private interests in public reasoning—thus restricting the understanding of various discursive practices online by groups that are socially situated away from the mainstream, particularly in informal and social networks. To counter this limitation, this study analyses Zimbabwean women’s use of digital media as an activist tool for political participation. The study specifically assesses how women’s lived experiences, as expressed in the stories shared on specific blogs on five Zimbabwean websites, are a distinct type of political behaviour targeted at challenging the status quo and accentuating women’s voices on issues of political, economic and socio-cultural interests. The findings indicate that, contrary to the current view that blogs simply chronicle women’s lives, blogging is in fact a political action where women are beginning to question societal norms that continue to oppress them and advocate for a more democratic culture. Thus, this paper concludes that through everyday conversations on blogs, we are able to identify the influence of structural inequalities and cultural differences on women’s experiences, and consequently to locate how and under what circumstances everyday talk transforms from non-political to political.
This article looks at citizen journalism as a contestant in the history of journalism. It reports on a study that employed a qualitative research approach through a qualitative questionnaire and a focus group discussion (FGD). Through purposive sampling, the participants in the study were drawn from the citizen journalists contributing news content to the citizen journalism websites Sahara Reporters and Iindaba Ziyafika from a Nigerian and a South African perspective, respectively. For diversity purposes, other participants were drawn from the Global Voices online, which is popular for engaging citizen journalists from different parts of the African continent: Tanzania, Cameroon, Ghana, Mozambique and Kenya, to mention a few. The questionnaire was distributed through the technical teams of the websites for self-completion by the citizen journalists. The FGD participants were drawn from those who contributed news content to Iindaba Ziyafika in South Africa where the researchers are based. The questionnaire and the FGD were addressed in English. The study findings showed that mainstream journalism acknowledges the importance of the phenomenon of citizen journalism and the people involved, but it still stands firm that objectivity is a precondition of journalism. The study aimed to cultivate an appreciation of the relationship between traditional and citizen journalism as the field of journalism endures major transformations.
Using the case study approach, this chapter examines ethical shortfalls confronting the media in the Internet era. The one case is drawn from a story published in The New York Times in 2015, while the other is a story published in a Zimbabwean newspaper, the Daily News. The objective was to broaden knowledge on how the Internet is impacting ethical practices in local and global political environments. The chapter argues that the Internet's architecture predisposes journalists to a host of unethical practices that were uncommon to the legacy media environment. Its immediacy exerts pressure on journalists to publish stories without adequate verification out of the fear of being "scooped" by competitors and citizen journalists who are less constrained to adhere to old-age journalistic ethics such as factual reporting and verification.
In feminist literature, there is a sense that the mobile phone amplifies women’s voices in a public sphere crowded by male domination. But how is this possible, when the attributes of mobile phones (mobility, connectivity, sociability) contradict the socialisation of women, particularly in Africa, where a ‘desirable’ femininity entails withdrawal from public spaces, shyness and being mostly confined to domestic settings? Using domestication theory, this study explores these questions through in-depth interviews with young female and male students in three higher learning institutions in Harare. While the mobile phone and Internet amplify the importance of identity construction and the psychological need by young women to formulate an empowering sense of self, there is a dialectical tension between the need for women’s autonomy from disempowering social processes vis-à-vis conformity to social hierarchy. Overall, these technologies – among other more formal processes such as education and legislation – expand the range of processes which advance women’s emancipation. While the private appropriation of digital media technologies by individuals in Africa is interlaced with contextual nuances and peculiarities, this opens up new possibilities for understanding the private as political, and for the popular to have serious public implications.
The article draws firstly on theories that question the exclusionary nature of mass communication in terms of the emancipatory potential of 'new media'; of the democratization of communication; or even in terms of advancing alternative forms of communication. By probing specifically into various small-scale, decentralised media projects, issues concerning the social as well as the cultural context of their implementation; their creation, production and dissemination; the employment of new technologies; and, instances of the very mediation process itself, across both the production and reception process, are addressed. From the perspective of a non-essentialist account of such media projects, the paper draws finally on approaches that evaluate these projects on the grounds of their 'lived experience', in terms of their social actors, agents; acknowledging thus an overall framework of understanding the practice of such projects, as instances of the constitution of citizenship.
This article attempts a brief overview of the recent debate on diasporas. It selectively focuses on aspects of the exchanges among theorists from the early 1990s onwards and seeks to identify ways in which our understanding of the concept has evolved and attempts to offer a critical evaluation of these.
The closure of The Daily News, Zimbabwe's only 'independent' newspaper in 2003 attracted both local and worldwide condemnation as the height of the Zimbabwe government's intolerance of diverse viewpoints. This paper critically analyses the circumstances surrounding the closure of The Daily News and argues that to a great degree, and in various ways, the paper contributed to its own closure, not least because of the hidden motives and ineptitude of its management. Despite immense contribution to opening up the democratic space in Zimbabwe, The Daily News had, right from the beginning, inherent problems that conspired with the political environment leading to its closure in 2003. The paper also argues that foreign ownership and foreign funding of media in developing countries can lead to the erosion of the necessary legitimacy that these media need to compete on the local market. It argues that while the independent press has undoubtedly played a crucial role in the democratisation process, they have failed to temper their newfound freedom with responsibility.
Despite its relative isolation from the global culture industry, telecommunications and mass communication centres and markets, Africa is buffeted by the winds of globalisation. Under World Bank and the IMF structural adjustment programs virtually all African countries privatised their telecommunications and mass media sectors, thus opening them up to Western multi‐national corporate investors. Though there might be an impression that African culture is being inundated and destroyed by American mass mediated culture, it is argued that Africans tend to select only certain aspects of Western cultural idioms, Africanise them and use them to promote African cultural values. Thus, it is argued, globalisation has had positive effects on certain aspects of African culture.
Displacement, Diaspora, and Geographies of Identity challenges conventional understandings of identity based on notions of nation and culture as bounded or discrete. Through careful examinations of various transnational, hybrid, border, and diasporic forces and practices, these essays push at the edge of cultural studies, postmodernism, and postcolonial theory and raise crucial questions about ethnographic methodology.
This volume exemplifies a cross-disciplinary cultural studies and a concept of culture rooted in lived experience as well as textual readings. Anthropologists and scholars from related fields deploy a range of methodologies and styles of writing to blur and complicate conventional dualisms between authors and subjects of research, home and away, center and periphery, and first and third world. Essays discuss topics such as Rai, a North African pop music viewed as westernized in Algeria and as Arab music in France; the place of Sephardic and Palestinian writers within Israel’s Ashkenazic-dominated arts community; and the use and misuse of the concept “postcolonial” as it is applied in various regional contexts.
In exploring histories of displacement and geographies of identity, these essays call for the reconceptualization of theoretical binarisms such as modern and postmodern, colonial and postcolonial. It will be of interest to a broad spectrum of scholars and students concerned with postmodern and postcolonial theory, ethnography, anthropology, and cultural studies.
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Alternative media may be characterised by the degree to which they are de-professionalised, de-institutionalised and de-capitalised. Using these characteristics as a starting point, the presence of the mundane in the production of alternative media is explored. Common features that are suggestive of a mundane approach include: the incorporation of media production into the routines of everyday life; the site of production in a domestic setting; and the depiction of everyday activities in the content of the media itself. Examples are provided from fanzines, perzines and new social movement media. The personal home page is presented as an exemplar of these 'mundane media' that draws on the resources of capitalism in both its communication form and its content. It is argued that, whilst the home page might lack the infractory dimension found in the popular production explored by John Fiske, its analysis offers insights into the development of identity and sociality through popular production by the 'silent majority.' © 2001, Chris Atton and Journal of Mundane Behavior. All rights reserved.
This article summarizes and analyzes the dilemma of alternative media as it has been theorized in selected statements in the literatures of mass communication. It locates the source of this dilemma in the theoretical assumptions about alternative media and their resulting inability to escape the seeming tradeoff between political effectiveness and organizational/cultural massification. It concludes by suggesting an alternative way of conceptualizing alternative media that instead of leading to efforts to build mirror images of mainstream media organizations with all their limitations, makes possible greater and more meaningful participation in public debates about the nature and direction of American society.
John Hartley: Before Ongism: "To become what we want to be, we have to decide what we were" Orality & Literacy: The Technologization Of The Word Introduction Part 1: The orality of language 1. The literate mind and the oral past 2. Did you say 'oral literature'? Part 2: The modern discovery of primary oral cultures 1. Early awareness of oral tradition 2. The Homeric question 3. Milman Parry's discovery 4. Consequent and related work Part 3: Some psychodynamics of orality 1. Sounded word as power and action 2. You know what you can recall: mnemonics and formulas 3. Further characteristics of orally based thought and expression 4. Additive rather than subordinative 5. Aggregative rather than analytic 6. Redundant or 'copious' 7. Conservative or traditionalist 8. Close to the human lifeworld 9. Agonistically toned 10. Empathetic and participatory rather than objectively distanced 11. Homeostatic 12. Situational rather than abstract 13. Oral memorization 14. Verbomotor lifestyle 15. The noetic role of heroic 'heavy' figures and of the bizarre 16. The interiority of sound 17. Orality, community and the sacral 18. Words are not signs Part 4: Writing restructures consciousness 1. The new world of autonomous discourse 2. Plato, writing and computers 3. Writing is a technology 4. What is 'writing' or 'script'? 5. Many scripts but only one alphabet 6. The onset of literacy 7. From memory to written records 8. Some dynamics of textuality 9. Distance, precision, grapholects and magnavocabularies 10. Interactions: rhetoric and the places 11. Interactions: learned languages 12. Tenaciousness of orality Part 5: Print, space and closure 1. Hearing-dominance yields to sight-dominance 2. Space and meaning 3. Indexes 4. Books, contents and labels 5. Meaningful surface 6. Typographic space 7. More diffuse effects 8. Print and closure: intertextuality 9. Post-typography: electronics Part 6: Oral memory, the story line and characterization 1. The primacy of the story line 2. Narrative and oral cultures 3. Oral memory and the story line 4. Closure of plot: travelogue to detective story 5. The 'round' character, writing and print Part 7: Some theorems 1. Literary history 2. New Criticism and Formalism 3. Structuralism 4. Textualists and deconstructionists 5. Speech-act and reader-response theory 6. Social sciences, philosophy, biblical studies 7. Orality, writing and being human 8. 'Media' versus human communication 9. The inward turn: consciousness and the text John Hartley: After Ongism: The Evolution of Networked Intelligence
We are living in times in which spatial frameworks of communication are in a state of upheaval. The old hegemony of state‐structured and territorially‐bound public life mediated by radio, television, newspapers and books is being rapidly eroded. In its place are developing a multiplicity of networked spaces of communication which are not tied immediately to territory, and which irreversibly fragment anything resembling a single, spatially‐integrated public sphere within a nation‐state framewrok. The conventional ideal of a unified public sphere and its corresponding vision of a republic of citizens striving to live up to some “public good”; are obsolete. Public life is today subject to “medievalization”;, not as Habermas defined it in Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit, but in the different sense of a developing and complex mosaic of differently sized, overlapping and interconnected public spheres. This restructuring of communicative space forces us to revise our understanding of public life and its “partner”; terms, such as public opinion, the public good and the private/public distinction.
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The article attempts a historically and culturally based definition of alternative media. It then gives some case studies to illustrate the efficacy of such media forms, apart from highlighting the problems associated with them. It concludes that alternative media emerge to deal with specific ideological projects and, as such, must be viewed as satisfying a specific need at a specific point in time.
This article describes a phenomenon known all over Africa, for which there is no really satisfactory term in English but which is summed up in the French term 'radio trottoir', literally 'pavement radio'. It may be defined as the popular and unofficial discussion of current affairs in Africa, particularly in towns. Unlike the press, television or radio, pavement radio is not controlled by any identifiable individual, institution or group of people. An examination of the social role and pedigree of pavement radio reveals it to be qualitatively different from either rumour or gossip and to have a quite different social and political function from its counterpart in Europe. It is also different from mere rumour in its choice of subject, often discussing matters of public interest or importance which have been the subject of no official announcement. Pavement radio should be seen in the light of oral tradition and treated as a descendant of the more formal oral histories associated with ruling dynasties and national rituals. Notes, ref
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