Introduction
Social media has become part of the everyday communicative, networking, and socialization routines of ordinary Africans. Given its social embeddedness in their lives, digital and social media platforms have assumed a much more pronounced role as conflict escalators and de-escalators.
Since its inception, social media, like other technologies before it, has been accompanied by moral panic. Some of these moral panics assume that social media is responsible for spawning various social vices like extreme hate speech, online polarization, misinformation, cyberbullying, trolling, and terrorism.
Like traditional media platforms, social media is increasingly implicated in conflict and peacebuilding processes across the world. Because of virality, conviviality, communality, and participative cultures, social media has been leveraged both as a force for good and a potent weapon for evil.
Although it is very difficult to arrive at cause and effect, there is an acknowledgement that anonymity and masked identities, which are enabled by the affordances of social media, have allowed bad actors to contaminate the digital public sphere. Cases abound where social media has been used in Africa to fuel political violence, terrorism, xenophobia, and many other types of violent conflicts.
In response to this transgressive usage of social media, some national governments have resorted to promulgating restrictive laws, implementing state-ordered internet shutdowns, banning of social media during times of emergencies, and imposition of social media taxes.1
These efforts by African governments to regulate social media, address online hate, or counter misinformation during election periods have been interpreted as veering towards censorship, stifling dissent or suppressing protests.2 The situation became even more pronounced during the COVID-19 pandemic when most countries resorted to draconian laws to push back against the spread of false and misleading information.
Despite the prominent role that social media plays in conflict and peacebuilding processes, there is little research that focuses on how it escalates or deescalates hostile situations. In the Southern African context, high levels of internet and social media penetration rates have also elicited moral panic amongst young citizens.
Social media, conflict, and peacebuilding: The grand debate?
Pertinent questions have arisen with regard to the relationship between social media, conflict, and peacebuilding. These include the following: Can social media cause conflicts? Can social media enhance peacebuilding efforts? What is the role of social media in recurrent conflicts in Africa? To what extent can social media turbo-charge xenophobic attacks against foreign nationals? How can social media be harnessed for conflict de-escalation?
Although answers to the above questions are very elusive, it is noteworthy to highlight that, as Wasserman (2018, n.p) argues, we should “instead of fetishizing [social media] technology in terms of its ‘impact’ or dismissing it as irrelevant…we need approaches to social media as forms of technology-in-relation, that is, technology as already embedded in the everyday lives of people, and in existing historical and political realities.”3
A debate pitting three different camps has come to define the relationship between social media, conflict, and peacebuilding. These camps include cyber-optimists, cyber-pessimists, and cyber-realists.4 Cyber-optimists celebrate social media’s potential role in peacebuilding and building cohesive and tolerant societies.
Cyber-pessimists bemoan the retrogressive roles of social media in fuelling conflicts, polarization, hate speech, terrorism, and xenophobia. In the middle are cyber-realists, who adopt a more cautious approach that transcends both the cyber-optimist and cyber-pessimist approaches.5 It acknowledges the double-edged nature of technology.
Likening social media to Damocles’ sword, Aouragh (2013) argues that those who are empowered by taking the seat under the sword do so haunted by the constant threat of being hurt by the same sword, because slaughter could come at the slightest disruption.6 The main argument here is that social media is an open-ended technology without closure, which allows state and non-state actors to harness it for good and nefarious purposes.
The Southern Africa Context
Southern Africa is currently dealing with low intensity terrorism-related conflict in the Northern part of Mozambique in Cabo Delgado region. This conflict has been going on since October 2017. Despite this conflict, Southern Africa is one of the most peaceful regions in Africa. This does not mean that the region is conflict-free. Cases of political violence, xenophobic attacks, military coups, and online polarization have been reported in countries such as Angola, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Some of these countries have been rocked by democratisation-related conflicts—whereby citizens have raised grievances around service delivery issues, good governance, rule of law, constitutional reforms, poor human rights record, and unemployment amongst the youth. Social media has played diverse roles in the organizing, choreographing, and performance of these protests. Non-state actors have used social media to mobilise protesters to go out into the streets. State actors have also used the same platforms to de-escalate the situation. For instance, during the recurrent xenophobic attacks against foreign nationals in South Africa, social media has been used by insurgent movements like #OperationDudula and #PutSouthAfricaFirst to mobilise communities to push out illegal immigrants These viral hashtags have coalesced on Facebook, TikTok, X, and WhatsApp.
In Zimbabwe, social media has been used by different political gladiators to settle political scores. The country has witnessed the mushrooming of cyber-trolls in the form of Varakashi (online thugs affiliated to the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and Emmerson Mnangagwa) and Nerrorists (online trolls sympathetic to Nelson Chamisa, formerly the leader of the Citizens Coalition for Change , aka CCC).7 These virtual gladiators have escalated online polarization, hate speech, and the spreading of false and misleading information. Incidences of gendered disinformation campaigns on X, Facebook and WhatsApp have been reported since 2017.
In Namibia, social media has often provided a safe space for low intensity communal and ethnic groups to fuel stereotypes and hate speech against each other. False and misleading narratives often accompany these ethnic slurs. Most of them often surface on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube, and WhatsApp. Instead of promoting civil conversations, racialized and ethnicized hate speech has become the order of the day, especially during political contests. The country also witnessed a powerful call to action in October 2020 when the #ShutItAllDown movement took centre stage on social media before it moved offline.
As far as Mozambique is concerned, conflict-related disinformation has been reported with regard to the conflict in Cabo Delgado. Coordinated production and distribution of disinformation designed to defame Mozambique’s Defence and Security Forces (FDS) have circulated on various social media platforms. Some of the audio-visual content portray examples of torture and brutality carried out by terrorists and FDS members.
It is clear that social media is increasingly implicated in conflict in Southern Africa. There is no space to discuss what is happening in Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi and Zambia. Suffice to note that comment sections on social media platforms in these countries have become platforms of hate speech and dark forms of participation.
However, efforts have also been implemented to promote peacebuilding through fact-checking initiatives by entities like Africa Check, Namibia Fact Check, and ZimFact. Civil society organizations have also used social media to promote tolerance, co-existence, and depolarization of communities, especially in xenophobic attacks prone South Africa. Working with platform companies, civil society organisations have focused multilingual content moderation, conflict early warning systems, and constructive dialogue between belligerents.
Endnotes
- Mare, A. (2020). State-Ordered Internet Shutdowns and Digital Authoritarianism in Zimbabwe. International Journal of Communication,14, 4244–4263.
- De Gregorio, G. And Stremlau, N. (2023). Inequalities and content moderation. Policy Insights. 14(5):870-879.
- Wasserman, H. (2018). Where the social is political. Africa as a country. Retrieved from https://africasacountry.com/2018/04/where-the-social-is-political
- Mare, A. (2016). Facebook, Youth and Political Action: A Comparative Study of Zimbabwe and South Africa. PhD dissertation, Rhodes University.
- Mare, A. (2016). Facebook, Youth and Political Action: A Comparative Study of Zimbabwe and South Africa. PhD dissertation, Rhodes University.
- Aouragh, M. (2013). Social Media as Damocles Sword: The Internet for Arab Activists. Unlike Us #3. Retrieved from http://networkcultures.org/unlikeus/2013/03/24/miriyam-aouragh-syrian-revolutio/.
- Mare, A. (2020). “Sites of manufacturing consent or resistance? Post-2000 media and political contestation in Zimbabwe.” In The Oxford Handbook of Zimbabwean Politics, edited by Miles Tendi, JoAnn McGregor, and Jocelyn Alexander. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
