Protest, Internet Activism, and Sociopolitical Change in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Sub-Saharan Africa has been the scene of a sizeable wave of social and political protests in recent years. These protests have many aspects in common, while at the same time there is a certain historic continuity connecting them to previous protests, with which they also have much in common. What makes them new, however, is a hybrid nature that combines street protest and online action, making them similar to protests occurring in other parts of the world during the same period. Based on a literature review and field work on three countries, Senegal, Burkina Faso, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, this article addresses some of the main features of what some authors have called the “third wave of African protests.” The study points out how the digital environment is galvanizing a new process of popular opposition and enabling both greater autonomy for actors promoting the protests and greater interaction at the regional level. With the sociopolitical impact in the short and medium term still uncertain, the third wave of African protests is giving birth to a new political and democratic culture in the region as a whole.

Contesting neoliberalism: Mapping the terrain of social conflict

“…These trends have been documented across the social movement studies literatures (Della Porta & Portos 2020; Giugni & Grasso 2020; Kriesi et al 2020; Mateos & Erro 2021). Yet, mainstream social movement studies literature has typically shied away from a focus on class-related social conflict and/or an explicitly Marxist analysis (Barker et al 2013: 3–7).…”

“…The year 2011 saw an outpouring of global unrest, which many viewed as a reaction to the global economic crisis of 2008 and the related onset of austerity politics, and which was subsequently followed throughout the 2010s by a sustained period of popular protest (Cammaerts 2018; Della Porta & Portos 2020; Giugni & Grasso 2020; Kriesi et al 2020; Mateos & Erro 2021; Worth 2013). The general trends that comprised this new terrain of social conflict have become relatively well known, including a tendency for protests to be staged in public spaces and to be informed by a commitment to direct action and prefigurativism, as well as witnessing the emergence of grassroots-level campaigns that are facilitated by social media and which exist both outside of formal institutions, such as trade unions and left-wing political parties, and sometimes challenges those institutions from within (Della Porta 2017; Ribera-Almandoz et al 2020).…”

Youtube as alternative media for digital activism in documentary film creative industry

“…Digital activism development cannot be separated from the digital revolution, where the progress of communication technology gave birth to social media in early 2010. Seen from a technology determinism perspective, the role of digital communication is fundamental in shaping the contours of current digital activism (Wolfson, 2014), such as the phenomenon of Arab Spring in early 2010, where virtual space is an enabler for a mass protest in trans-national public space of the Middle East and North African to demand the power transition from authoritarian to democratic (Kim & Lim, 2019;Mateos & Erro, 2020;Postill, 2014). The Arab Spring phenomenon primarily uses Facebook to organise the schedule of protests, Twitter to coordinate the locations of movements, and YouTube to show their actions to the world (Kim & Lim, 2019).…”

Youth-Led Social Movements and Peacebuilding in Africa

“…The movement was determined to stop the voting process that would lead to the constitution being changed. On 30 October 2014, they attacked the National Assembly, stopped the voting and the country was embroiled in violence and riots, as people challenged the security apparatus (Mateos and Bajo-Erro 2020). It became obvious that the government was not going to survive, and the protest had evolved forcing the president to resign.…”