Social media dissidence in Zimbabwe

Abstract: Dissidents exist in every nation, always have, and perhaps always will – existing in that precarious space between being patriots and enemies of the state. Social media, on the other hand, is a recent tool of communication that is defined by its heightened ductility in the hands of users. One such ductile use is the propagation of political dissent. The admixture of social media and political dissidence has thrown many governments in an interminable panic, reflected in the raft of legislation enacted or in the process of being enacted in most countries, meant to manage and regulate cyber activity as best as possible. The panic is even more pronounced in countries with known histories of dissidence, such as Zimbabwe. “Dissidence” has a very specific social, historical and political association in Zimbabwe: dissidents are vapanduki, a reference to enemies of the state. This study investigated the born-digital phenomenon of “social media dissidence” in Zimbabwe during the period 2013 to 2016, an era that is salient because it bore witness to a variety of disruptive acts by individuals and groups that provoked panicked responses from the state. Using qualitative data drawn from Facebook and Twitter and deploying a reconfigured theorising of the public sphere and of subalternity, the study examined the nature of the born-digital dissidence in a sample of four cases, Baba Jukwa, #ThisFlag, @ProfJMMoyo and #Tajamuka. In effect, the study sought to establish the possibilities and limitations of deploying social media as a tool for expressing dissent, protest and dissidence. The study found that social media dissidence is a process, always in the process of becoming, marked by constant flux, metamorphosis, and peaks and troughs. Indeed, there are many levels of “social media dissidence” and many types of “social media dissidents”, which requires novel means of categorisation and taxonomy. The use of social media is highly ambivalent and is not a monopoly of dissidents. Rather, it can be deployed effectively against the very same dissidents. It was concluded that the space of social media dissidence is a rich arena for studying the evolution of dissidence and the proliferation of varieties of dissidence and dissidents in our modern times; even categories we did not associate with dissidence were thrown into relief, exposing fault-lines and possibilities for reinforcing or changing our minds about dissidence. The ultimate contribution of the study was to unfix the notion of dissidence from rigid normativity.D.Litt. et Phil. (Communication Studies