This book reflects on the rapid rise of social media across the African continent and the legal and extra-legal efforts governments have invented to try to contain it. The relentless growth of social media platforms in Africa has provided the means of resistance, self-expression, and national self-fashioning for the continent’s restlessly energetic and contagiously creative youth. This has provided a profound challenge to the African "gatekeeper state", which has often responded with strategies to constrict and constrain the rhetorical luxuriance of the social media and digital sphere. Drawing on cases from across the continent, contributors explore the form and nature of social media and government censorship, often via antisocial media laws, or less overt tactics such as state cybersurveillance, spyware attacks on social media activists, or the artful deployment of the rhetoric of "fake news" as a smokescreen to muzzle critical voices. The book also reflects on the Chinese influence in African governments’ clampdown on social media and the role of Israeli NSO Group Technologies, as well as the tactics and technologies which activists and users are deploying to resist or circumvent social media censorship. Drawing on a range of methodologies and disciplinary approaches, this book will be an important contribution to researchers with an interest in social media activism, digital rebellion, discursive democracy in transitional societies, censorship on the Internet, and Africa more broadly.

The smartphone and social media have transformed Africa, allowing people across the continent to share ideas, organise, and participate in politics like never before. While both activists and governments alike have turned to social media as a new form of political mobilization, some African states have increasingly sought to clamp down on the technology, introducing restrictive laws or shutting down networks altogether. Drawing on over a dozen new empirical case studies – from Kenya to Somalia, South Africa to Tanzania – this collection explores how rapidly growing social media use is reshaping political engagement in Africa. But while social media has often been hailed as a liberating tool, the book demonstrates how it has often served to reinforce existing power dynamics, rather than challenge them. Featuring experts from a range of disciplines from across the continent, this collection is the first comprehensive overview of social media and politics in Africa. By examining the historical, political, and social context in which these media platforms are used, the book reveals the profound effects of cyber-activism, cyber-crime, state policing and surveillance on political participation.

This ground-breaking volume examines enduring and emerging discourses around communication rights in Africa, arguing that they should be considered an integral component of the human rights discourse in Africa. Drawing on a broad range of case studies across the continent, the volume considers what constitutes communication rights in Africa, who should protect them, against whom, and how communication rights relate to broader human rights. While the case studies highlight the variation in communicative rights experiences between countries, they also coalesce around common tropes and practices for the implementation and expression of communication rights. Deploying a variety of innovative theoretical and methodological approaches, the chapters scrutinise different facets of communication rights in the context of both offline and digital communication realities. The contributions provide illuminating accounts on language rights, digital exclusion, digital activism, citizen journalism, media regulation and censorship, protection of intellectual property rights, politics of mobile data, and politicisation of social media. This is the first collection to consider communication in Africa using a rights-based lens. The book will appeal to researchers, academics, communication activists, and media practitioners at all levels in the fields of media studies, journalism, human rights, political science, public policy, as well as general readers who are keen to know about the status of communication rights in Africa.

This book focuses on developing a systematic approach to understanding the transformations in Africa's public sector social media landscape. Looking at the use of social media from the African public sector perspective, the authors present a comprehensive understanding of social media practices and how these could be integrated into African public sector institutions’ operational activities in order to deliver greater value for African citizens and consumers of public goods and services. Chapters explore how social media in Africa differs from traditional media use, their application in the public sector, objectives for government using social media, and how social media plays an interactive role in e-government services. Providings practical guidance on the use of social media in Africa’s public sector and governmental spaces, the book also serves as a teaching text in governance and public sector communication efforts within the African context for both undergraduate and graduate programmes.

This book critically examines the manifest and latent practices of surveillance in the southern African region, using case studies from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Namibia, Botswana and Mozambique. The book demonstrates the growing role of super-powers in the construction and normalization of the surveillance state. It traces the digitization of surveillance practices to the rapid adoption of smart CCTV, facial recognition technologies and EMSI catchers. Through predictive policing mechanisms, state security agencies have appropriated digital media technologies for sentiment analysis, constant monitoring of digital footprints of security targets, and even deploying cyber-troops on popular social media platforms. The authors argue that surveillance practices have thus been digitized with deleterious impact on the right to privacy, peaceful assembly and freedom of expression in the region. Furthermore, they argue that specific laws and regulations governing surveillance practices in the region are lagging behind. Finally, the book demonstrates how digital surveillance have significantly infiltrated the political, economic and social fabric of Southern Africa. This book provides much needed systematic, cutting-edge research into the trends, practices, policies and geo-political interests at the center of surveillance practices in the region, providing a crucial link between human rights, such as freedom of privacy and expression, and political authoritarianism.

The uptake of digital media platforms necessitates the need to understand how digital cultures of consumers and brands are unfolding. Despite the increase in usage and adoption of the internet in Africa, there is limited information about digital marketing trends on the continent. This book is among the first to present an edited collection of chapters on digital and influencer marketing authored by many who are either from or have close ties to Africa. This book showcases digital marketing trends in Africa that are burgeoning at the same speed as the uptake of technology in the continent. With this in mind, the contributors seek to interrogate digital marketing trends in two stages: the status of digital marketing on the African continent, including cases from Nigeria, Egypt, Uganda and Kenya, and an analysis of the rise of influencer marketing, including cases from Nigeria and Uganda. This book will explore factors driving the increase in digital media platforms in Africa as well as an analysis of the implications of the growth in digital marketing, using various theoretical and methodological underpinnings to probe trends. Digital Public Relations and Marketing Communication Trends in Africa provides significant implications for marketing scholars and researchers and will be relevant to those looking to understand the opportunities and challenges ahead.

A comprehensive and accessible introduction, this book examines a range of issues pertaining to theory, history and critiques of media in Africa. Featuring contributions from global scholars, that represent both new and established voices on the African continent and the diaspora, this volume explores themes of decolonization, media freedom, media censorship, identity, representation, pluralism, media framing, political economy of the media with emphasis on ownership, market trends and transnational media operations in Africa. Contributors explore these and other topics across a variety of media tiers, types, genres and platforms. The book also features contributions from practicing journalists and media practitioners working in Africa, providing students with hands-on knowledge from the field. Chapters in this volume take an instructional approach with contributors engaging key concepts and related theories to explore the praxis of media in Africa through specific case studies. An essential text for students of media, communication, journalism, and cultural studies who are studying media in Africa, as well as those studying global media.