Episode 23
Social Media & the Changing Election Landscape in Zimbabwe
This week we are speaking to Dr. Admire Mare on Social Media & the Changing Election Landscape in Zimbabwe. Dr. Mare is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Communication at the Namibia University of Science and Technology, Windhoek, Namibia. He is also a Senior Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg’s Faculty of Humanities. His research interests include analyzing the complex intersection between technology and society, people-centred social policies in the global South, digital journalism, social media and politics, media and democracy, media and conflict and the role of artificial intelligence in changing African newsrooms. He currently leads the international research project Social Media, Misinformation and Elections in Kenya and Zimbabwe (SoMeKeZi) funded by the Social Science Research Council (2019-2021). He is a member of the Africa Media Salon and serves on the editorial boards of Digital Journalism, African Journalism Studies and Communicare.
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Host & Producer: Chipo Mapondera
Editor: Deirbhile Ní Bhranáin
Sound Engineer: Fungai Nengare
Theme Music: Anna De Mutiis
Resources:
Follow @admire2mare
Contact Dr. Mare via email: amare@nust.na or admiremare@gmail.com
Learn more about the Social Media, Misinformation and Elections in Kenya and Zimbabwe research project via Facebook.
Learn more about Zimbabwe’s media ecosystem and election campaigning in Dr. Mare’s paper Hybrid Media System and the July 2018 Elections in “Post-Mugabe” Zimbabwe.
Learn more about the consumption of fake news and cyber-propaganda in sub-Saharan Africa in Dr. Mare’s paper “Fake News” and Cyber-Propaganda in Sub- Saharan Africa: Recentering the Research Agenda.
Learn more about the 2019 internet shutdowns in Zimbabwe in Dr. Mare’s article Internet Shutdowns in Africa| State-Ordered Internet Shutdowns and Digital Authoritarianism in Zimbabwe via the International Journal of Communications.
For an overview of how social media was used in elections in Ghana, read the article The hidden costs of social media in African elections – the case of Ghana from Democracy in Africa.
Learn how social media was used to spread fake news in the 2018 Brazil elections in the The Guardian article WhatsApp fake news during Brazil election ‘favoured Bolsonaro’.
Learn more about internet trolls farms in The Philippines elections in this article by The Verge, Duterte’s troll armies drown out COVID-19 dissent in the Philippines.
Learn more about internet shutdowns in Tanzania, ahead of the 2020 elections, in the Access Now article Tanzania is weaponizing internet shutdowns. Here’s what its people have to say.
The BBC article Africa internet: Where and how are governments blocking it? analyses recent internet shutdowns across the African continent.
The Global Risk Insights article Internet and Social Media Shutdowns on the African Continent gives further insight into the political and economic risks of internet shutdowns in Africa.
For background on the 2019 internet shutdown read this Al Jazeera article: Zimbabwe imposes internet shutdown amid crackdown on protests.
Learn more about digital human rights and how they might be demanded in the MISA article Digital rights lessons from Zimbabwe’s internet shutdown.
Read about the impact of the 2019 Sri-Lankan internet shutdown on Easter attack victims in the Access Now article Sri Lanka: shutting down social media to fight rumors hurts victims.
Read Amarnath Amarasingam & Rukshana Rizwie’s Strategic Communications Project Report Turning the Tap Off: The Impacts of Social Media Shutdown After Sri Lanka’s Easter Attacks.
The Wired article Don't Praise the Sri Lankan Government for Blocking Facebook argues that the 2019 Sri Lankan internet shutdowns did more harm than good.
Zimbabwean news platforms mentioned by Admire:
Doc Vikela Instagram and Twitter
Maggi & Gonyeti of BustopTV