Blogging down a dictatorship: Human rights, citizen journalists and the right to communicate in Zimbabwe

Abstract

This article examines the use of blogs to mediate the experiences of citizens during a violent election in Zimbabwe. It focuses specifically on how people disseminated and shared information about their tribulations under a regime that used coercive measures in the face of its crumbling hegemonic edifice. The article frames these practices within theories of alternative media and citizen journalism and argues that digitization has occasioned new counter-hegemonic spaces and new forms of journalism that are deinstitutionalized and deprofessionalized, and whose radicalism is reflected in both form and content. I argue that this radicalism in part articulates a postmodern philosophy and style as seen in its rejection of the elaborate codes and conventions of mainstream journalism. The internet is seen as certainly enhancing the people’s right to communicate, but only to a limited extent because of access disparities on the one hand, and its appropriation by liberal social movements whose configuration is elitist, on the other. I conclude by arguing that the alternative media in Zimbabwe, as reflected by Kubatana’s bloggers, lack the capacity to envision alternative social and political orders outside the neoliberal framework. This, I contend, is partly because of the political economy of both blogging as a social practice and alternative media as subaltern spaces. Just as the bloggers are embedded to Kubatana’s virtual space to self-publish, Kubatana is likewise embedded to a neoliberal discourse that is traceable to its funding and financing systems.

Journalism and social media in the African context

“…Over at least the last half decade there has been mounting evidence that the technology is being used, to varying degrees, by citizens to contribute to news-making and information exchange in influential ways (Mabweazara 2011;Moyo, D. 2009;Moyo, L. 2011). Bivens (2008, 119) observes that in Zimbabwe 'information sent from mobile phones makes up some of the only news coverage mainstream media organisations can acquire'.…”

Alternative Voices, Alternative Spaces: Counterhegemonic Discourse in the Blogosphere

“…Existing research acknowledges a cultural shift towards personalised political activity (Bennett & Segerberg, 2011;Breindl, 2010) and the use of blogs for discursive activism (Moyo, 2011;Shaw, 2011;Steele, 2012) The blogosphere is a contradictory space that reproduces inequalities that exist within traditional media (Kellner, 2000) and helps maintain corporate media power while providing a platform for counterhegemonic practice (Fuchs …”

Examining the contribution of social media in reinforcing political participation in Zimbabwe

“…Besides, previous case studies have credited social and alternative media platforms for democratizing the digital space, potentially providing a base for transformative politics. Research by Leijendekker and Mutsvairo (2014), Moyo (2011) has recognized the civil society's role in advocating political change using citizen journalism and blogging. Harsch (2012) has pointed to citizen journalism for starting a massive insurgency, which stopped President Abdoulaye Wade from undermining the Senegalese constitution, a development he argues, effectively led to his electoral defeat a few months later.…”