Digital Activism in the Social Media Era: Critical Reflections on Emerging Trends in Sub-Saharan Africa

‘Our old pastor thinks the mobile phone is a source of evil.’ Capturing contested and conflicting insights on digital wellbeing and digital detoxing in an age of rapid mobile connectivity

“…It shows how the sampled young adults, despite being increasingly worried about the use of their mobile phones, do not always have a clear strategy to reduce the overuse of technology that could cause stress and anxiety. Little is known about Zimbabwe's digital cultures save only for research looking into online forms of political and social resistance, which have dominated the nation's digital realms given its longstanding battles against dissent (Mutsvairo, 2016).…”

“…In general, countries in the Global South have made huge strides in improving technological infrastructures as the need for accessing and using ICTs continues to gather worldwide momentum (Ragnedda and Gladkova, 2020). However, the availability of technologies does not necessarily transform into the adoption of such technologies (Mutsvairo 2016). Even though 84 percent of the population in Sub-Saharan Africa had a mobile signal, only one-third of adults owned smartphones in Ghana, Senegal, Nigeria and Kenya in 2015 (Silver and Johnson, 2018).…”

Scrutinising South African media companies’ strategies for Generation Z’s news consumption

“…The literature that informed this study and the research questions was based on the backdrop of global literary news consumption and news production studies, combining the works of both international research organisations and academics (such as Newman and Nielsen of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism digital news reports; Pavlik's literature on innovation and digital journalism; Weslund on mobile devices and news consumption on the go and Mark Deuze's multimedia journalism studies). The African literature adopted explores the African digital media landscape and its offerings based on the concepts of technological domestication (Mabweazara, 2015;Mabweazara and Mare, 2021), mobile media (Mwaura, 2017), convergence (Berger, 2005, social networking of youth (Bosch and Mutsvairo, 2017) amongst others, as concepts that can help us understand the context of this study.…”

“Loitering” with Unconcerned Clicks: Class Nature and Social Exclusion of Sina Weibo Users in Representing Chinese Migrant Workers

“…1) utopian and techno-centric approaches toward online activism that tend to capture its positive side which is largely based on early Arab Spring research (Castells, 2012;Bennett & Segerberg, 2011;Malcom & Shirky, 2011;Howard & Hussain, 2013) as well as "Arab Spring 2.0" or other more recent social movements research (Mutsvairo & Wasserman, 2016;Tufekci, 2017;Vink, 2018;Potz, 2019); arguing that online activism promotes networked communication and social movements, enhances social justice, and breaks through government control in the social media era;…”