Chapter One

Leonard Makombe - 15852938

Promoter - Dr. G.J. Botma

Title

How social media facilitate public participation in the election of a new government: A

critical analysis of Twitter discourses in Zimbabwe during the 2013 elections

B.1 Preliminary study and rationale

“….the internet is the most democratising innovation ever seen…” Joe Trippi (quoted

in Hindman, 2009: 2).

Debate on social media’s potential to facilitate public participation in political processes was

evident from the 1990s onwards (Breindl, 2010:43; Atton, 2004) with Trippi’s sentiments

(quoted above) underscoring optimism in new technologies. However, criticism against

unqualified optimism gathered momentum after the 2009 post-elections protests in Iran and

Moldova as well as the so-called Arab Spring1 (Starbird & Palen, 2012; Shirky, 2011;

Mungiu-Pippidi & Munteanu, 2009). Some studies confirm social media’s2 catalysing effects

in revolts, also termed “Twitter Revolutions” (Shirky, 2011), claiming that social media

provided “tools to facilitate interaction and responses to questions they (activists) would have

found difficult to answer offline” (Aouragh & Alexander, 2011:349). Social media platforms

“represent an important instrumental resource” (Eltantawy & Wiest, 2011:1212) to bridge

participatory gaps, empowering and mobilising citizens to participate both online and offline.

Critics, however, contend that social media bring inconsequential change as protests could

still have occurred without them (Gladwell, 2011; Morozov, 2011; Alterman, 2011). Gladwell

(2011) emphasises the historical role of the word of mouth as more important than social

media. Critical theorists (Fuchs, 2014a; Mejias, 2011; Mejias, 2012) further posit that the

structure of the internet and the social media platforms is structured in such a way that the

users do not have equal opportunities and resources to participate. This is a clear

1 Popular protests that started as what was termed the Jasmine Revolution in late 2010 in Tunisia resulting in the change of government before spreading to Egypt then other Arab and North African and Sub-Saharan countries.2 Social media refers to a group of internet based applications that allow for the creation and exchange of user generated content. Social media takes various forms like social networks, blogs, weblogs and video. Social media tools which have been highly emphasised include Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010).

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drawwback on the supposition that the use of the information communication technologies

bridge participatory gaps. Mejias (2012) dismisses assumption of liberation during the Arab

Spring as such discourse focuses on “wired activists” to the exclusion of those who do not

use social media or computer literate. Such portrayal not only shuts out the activists who are

not using social media or computer literate but “imagines social change as an outcome of

information flows within a network and activists portrayed as nodes transmitting dissent to

other nodes. In order for liberation to happen, everyone must be connected to the digital

network.” This suggests that there can be no revolution outside the nodes, a point that

shows the exclusionary nature of this approach as discussed below.

Debate on how social media transforms political participation, while taking many forms and

being initiated and supprted by various scholars, can be distilled into two broad opposing

viewpoints namely technology optimists and technology pessimists. The former is also

referred to as technology utopianists while the pessimists are also called dystopians (Mejias,

2011).

The utopian versus dystopian debate is far from being settled as each side has presented

‘empirical’ evidence to prove their standpoint. This research takes a critical theory view that it

does not serve any purpose to try and see which school of thought has gained prominency

but to “acknowledge the struggle rather than assuming that it has already ended with the

victory of business or government or some ill defined notion of democracy as do many

current approaches” (Feenberg, 2011:8). The utopian viewpoint (Shirky, 2008; Papacharisi,

2010; Lotan, Graeff, Ananny, Gaffney, Pearce and boyd, 2011;), is premised on the

affordances that come with information communication technologies with social tools that

have created a positive supply side shock to the amount of freedom in the world. Feenberg

(2011:7) adds that the internet may not be a neutral tool but its affordances can be

combined and appropriated in ways that allows for opening of paths that are influential in

future. Shirky (2008, 172) further argues that: “…to speak online is to publish, to publish

online is to connect with others. With the arrival of globally accessible publishing, freedom of

speech is now freedom of press and freedom of the press is freedom of assembly.” The

connections that result from social media usage is also seen as serving “…primarily to

connect the personal to the political and the self to the polity and society (Papacharisi,

2010:164). This, according to Papacharisi (2010:131) brings forth a new form of public

sphere with the participants’ online activities constituting:

…an expression of dissent with public agenda….these potentially powerful acts of

dissent emanate from private sphere of interaction, meaning that the citizen engages

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and is enabled politically through a private media environment located within the

individual’s personal and private space.

The resultant ‘collapse’ of the boundaries between private and public space means that what

the individual engages in on social media platforms (with a set of friends or followers) has a

significant impact on the public sphere. These interactions can be organised in such a way

that they may be able to challenge dominance or make significant political changes.

Utopians argue that because of the internet’s various technologies of communications and

interaction, “marginalised groups are able to develop counter discourses, (including

practices and cultures) that can challenge and resist domination,” (Dahlberg &Siapera,

2007:6). According to Feenberg (2014), internet is ethically and politically significant

because of its abilities to form communities but is quick to question if the resultant online

communities are real and engage their members seriously. Recent researches (Bastos,

Puschmann & Travitzki, 2013:1) describe as optimistic the assumptions about the diversity

of actors and discourse in social media as “opinion leaders leaders emerge in online

communities and establish themselves by being highly active and by occupying a priviledged

position in the social network.” This is of interest as critical theorists question the veracity of

this sweeping supposition as argued below. Some of the critical theorists are not convinced

that that online communities are real communities. Thus it means that this research has to

employ research tools that probe the nature of the communities that emerge as a result of

the use of social media, particularly Twitter during a given period.

The view that the internet’s social media platforms have a causal relationship on society,

according to Fuchs (2014b:201) is a technological determinist approach, which

“overestimates the role of of technology in society. It ignores the fact that technology is

embedded into society and it is people living under and rebelling against power relations not

technology, who conduct unrest and revolutions.” The one dimensional approach adopted by

the technoptimists may not be able to sufficely explain the causal relations between

technology and society. As such, the technopessimists insist that any analysis should go

deeper than this one dimensional apparoach. This is not to discount the affordances that

have been brought about by the various social media platforms such as undercutting “some

of the annoying requirements of organising” (Aouragh, 2012:523) and “assembling small

groups for discussion and deliberation,” (Feenberg, 2014:7). These are very important

contextual platforms but should also be analysed for content.

Fuchs (2014b:186-187) acknowledges the affordances that are brought about by the social

media but cautions against being overly optimistic stating that “online activism can cause

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material and symbolic harm and can be a threat to the powerful….but a lot of online politics

is harmless and can simply be ignored by the powerful.” Fuchs (2014b) disagrees with the

technology optimists (Papacharisi, 2010; Shirky, 2008) saying the use of social media for

online political participation has not ushered in a new form of public sphere in the

Harbermasian3 sense.

Mejias (2011) takes a very radical approach to the analysis of how technology impacts

political participation, maintaining a critical theory view that “although internet’s original

architecture encourage openness, it is becoming increasingly privatised and centralised.”

Mejias (2012) and Fuchs (2014a) argue that the portrayal of the role of social media in

enhancing and facilitating political participation by technology optimists ignores the structural

issues such as “power imbalances” or the need to be computer literate (Mejias, 2012) that

affect participation. Fuchs (2014a, 56) posits that the technology utopians’ approach “focus

on technology without taking into account its embededness into power structures.” This line

of argument is taken further by Christensen (2011) who, drawing on how social media was

used during the post-elections demonstrations in Iran and how the state used latest

technology for surveillance and repression, clearly discounts the fact that there were Twitter

Revolutions or YouTube Wars.

A great deal of discourse – often revolving around sexy phrases such as Twitter

Revolutions or YouTube War – has reinforced the central role of technology in anti –

government dissent, only for critical questions to be raised shortly afterward

regarding the actual level of the use and effect of such technologies (Christensen,

2011:155).

The statement above shows the growing groundswell against technology optimism. While

there are clearly diametrically opposed approaches to the role that social media plays in

facilitating public participation in political affairs, Christensen (2011:156), despite being

dismissive of the technoptimists, argues for:

….balancing (intellectually and theoretically) the relation between the affordances of

social media technologies and the materialities of the offline world. Considering the

affordances and the materialities is, in essence, a reminder to consider the

importance of socio-political context in the analysis of social media.

It is thus important to be cognisant of socio-political context when analysing the use of

Twitter to facilitate political participation during the 2013 elections and doing so requires an

analysis of the media landscape in Zimbabwre as well as using critical discourse analysis as

a research tool.

3 Harbermas’ concept of the public sphere entails a platform that allows for the formation of public opinion, all citizens have access, can conference in unrestricted fashion, debate or the general rules governing relations.

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Mejias (2012) argues that utopian discourse on liberation technology conceals how

production on duch platforms exhibit power imbalannces and subsequently calls for the

need to “question the utopian narrative that describes a seamless evolution from monopolies

(one to many) to democratised circuits of communications (many to many.” In his analysis,

Mejias (2012), sees the empowering of more voices not fundamentally altering the market

structure of communication as “one-to-many is not giving way to many-to-many without first

going through many-to-one.” By this, Mejias is arguing that the monopoly of traditional media

producers, such as newspapers (one-to-many) has given way to monopsony (only one buyer

of the products.)

Based on experience and preliminary research, I am inclined to subscribe to the optimists

as far as the situation in Zimbabwe is concerned, and agree with Shirky (2011) and Starbid

and Palen (2012) that social media, and especially Twitter, have seemingly offerred new

platforms for citizen engagement in that country.

Active public participation through traditional media such as newspapers and radio held so

much promise at independence in 1980 but arguably declined thereafter as Zimbabwe

developed into an authoritarian regime with less credible elections and low voter turnout

(Sithole, 2001). A rapid legislated closure of political space since 2000 (Freedom House,

2012), coiniciding with steep economic decline, negatively impacted public participation as

the electorate focussed on survival, not politics (Schlee, 2011:1). This also came against a

background on concerted efforts by the state to reign in the media.4

The stifling of political space hindered mainstream media’s role “as watchdogs and

custodians of the public good and active citizens” (Moyo, 2011:2), arguably giving

momentum to emerging alternative media platforms. Faced with a restrictive legal

4 The use of the mass media as mouthpieces for state propaganda has persisted from the colonial through to independent Zimbabwe (Moyo, 2010:180). Successive governments have used the Broadcasting Act (1957) and Broadcasting Services Act (2001) to control broadcasting (Moyo, 2004:11). The colonial state monopolised broadcasting services and “jammed nationalist [Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU)] shortwave frequencies and prohibited all but FM receivers in rural areas” (Moyo, 2004:13). ZANU and ZAPU, (the nationalist organisations separately fighting for the liberation of Zimbabwe) broadcasted on shortwave from Zambia, Mozambique, Egypt, Russia and Ghana from 1963 to 1980 (Morsia, Riddle & Zaffiro, 1994). At independence, government adopted media policies “fundamentally interconnected in efforts to perpetuate authoritarian, personalistic, de-facto one party rule” (Zaffiro, 2001:102). The government reigned in the press by buying out “foreign shareholding in major newspapers” (Zaffiro, 2001:113) to establish Zimpapers, which political elites maintained a stranglehold on (Dube, 1995). Despite replacing the Broadcasting Act (of 1957) with the Broadcasting Services Act (2001), airwaves were not opened to other broadcasters (Moyo, 2004), giving rise to shortwave pirate radio stations (Moyo, 2012). Only two radio licenses, one for Zimpapers were issued out in 2012 since the enactment of Broadcasting Services Act (2001).

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environment, activists and grassroot organisations initiated innovative strategies to

broadcast content (Windeck, 2010; Moyo, 2012:484), including shortwave radio stations,

roadcasting (distributing pre-recorded audio materials), podcasting, mass short message

services (mass SMS) and interactive voice responses. Roadcasting contravened the Access

to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (2001) (Moyo, 2012:485), as distribution of

audio materials required registration with the Media and Information Commission. Mass

SMS could be monitored under the Interception of Communications Act (2006), while

shortwave broadcasts were interfered with by the state using equipment bought in China

(Mavhunga, 2008:2).

The internet, and especially social media, thus emerged as a popular site for citizens

seeking alternative information (Kelly & Cook, 2011; Zaffiro, 2001). This trend gave rise to “

a new reform based emergent alternative media narrative that encourage, articulate and

stimulate public participation” (Mutsvairo & Columbus, 2012:8) and a platform to distribute

content as well as “an avenue to discuss a taboo subject without fear of being reprimanded

by the secretive and authoritarian state” (Mpofu, 2011:1). New information communication

technologies (ICTs) altered the media landscape allowing “alternative voices to proliferate”

(Zaffiro, 2001:114) and despite signals weakening relative to distance from urban centres,

internet access through mobile phones has spread across the country (See annex A) raising

potential for alternative media use. Literature on social media use in Zimbabwe shows great

optimism in social media’s role in facilitating public participation in politics, echoing

assertions by cyber optimists (see Starbird & Palen, 2012; Shirky, 2011; Diamond, 2010).

A preliminary study has shown that there is growing use of social media, especially

Facebook and Twitter (Opera, 2014), in Zimbabwe as politicians, political parties, activists,

interest groups and ordinary citizens use both for political information, discussion and

feedback. Despite a growing body of literature on the use of social media in Zimbabwe (see

Mutsvairo & Columbus, 2012; Moyo, 2011; Kelly & Cook, 2011; Masuku, 2011;), for

unknown and not clear reasons no previous study has focused specifically on how Twitter

facilitate public participation during elections.

B.2 Problem statement and focus

Zimbabwe is considered a repressive and not free country (Freedom House, 2012) with

decreasing active public participation in national elections (Sithole, 2001) and a muzzled

traditional media sector (Moyo, 2011). A repressive political environment and stifled media

has potential to unlock opportunities for social media use for political information, discussion

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and mobilisation. Facebook and Twitter5 are dominant social media platforms in Zimbabwe

with “….(Facebook) accounts already opened by virtually all sectors” (Mutsvairo &

Columbus, 2012:1).

Background to Twitter

Twitter was founded by Jack Dorsey and associates in San Francisco in 2006, bringing

together two subcultures, that is new media coding culture and the radio scanning and

dispatch enthusiasm (Rodgers, 2014:X) (what is new media coding culture and radio

scanning and dispatch). Twitter names microblog posts by users as tweets. Each tweet has

a 140 character limit a “feature inherited from text messaging where the original 160

character short message service limit was reorganised into 20 character user name and 140

character post,” (Murat & Guneyt, 2010:3). At its beginning, Twitter was considered an urban

lifestyle tool for updating friends on one’s whereabouts (Rodgers, 2014:X), until 2009, the

platform asked its users: What are you doing? (Rodgers, 2014:XII). The way Twitter users

answered this question led to many who studied Twitter to conclude that the content there is

mundane, banal and phatic (Rodgers, 2014; Fuchs, 2014;) or a noisy environment

(Honeycult & Herring, 2009). Fuchs (2014:200) goes on to ask if serious discourse can be

undertaken within 140 characters as allowed by Twitter saying the “short text may invite

simplistic arguments and be an expression of the commodification and speeded-up nature of

culture.” However, as Rodgers (2009:5) states, it is somehow expecting too much from

tweets as “the very basic question that Twitter asked was not, ‘What do you think or know?’

but was ‘What are you doing?’6 thus users’ posts cannot be expected to be literature

pieces.”

Researching on how Twitter facilitated political participation entails critically analysing how

Twitter users discussed the elections and this can best be done by identifying certain hash

tags that were using during the period under study. Hash tags are a “useful and mechanism

for coordinating conversation around identified themes and events” (Bruns & Stieglitz,

0000:6). The hastag is largely a “user generated mechanism for tagging and collating tweets

related to a specific topic” (Bruns & Burges, 2011:3) and Twitter users manipulate this

mechanism to mark posts for easy of identification of theme, discussion or event. Twitter

discussion around a theme, which is usually signified by a hash tag, allows for a “significant

5 Twitter, launched in 2006, is a popular social networking and micro-blogging service by which users can send and receive text-based posts of up to 140 characters, known informally as “tweets.” Twitter has expanded most rapidly in recent months; As of December 2012, Twitter had 200 million users per month. Source: http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2012/12/18/twitter-now-has-200-million- monthly-active-users-up-60-million-in-9-months6 From its inception, Twitter’s tagline question was “What are you doing?” but changed it to “What is happening?” in November 2009 (Rodgers, 2014:XVI).

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amount of broader commentary on current events” (Bruns and Burges, 2012:2). The hash

tag permits for coordinating of the discussions and at the same time allows for the formation

of publics along the lines of Castell’s network society7. The inclusion of a hash tag, (Bruns &

Hallvard, 2014: 17) means that the tweet’s reach goes beyond the follower – followee

network as the hash tags “work as markers of a topic, an issue, an event and help to

coordinate the exchange of information related to such topics.” It is important to note that

the resultant public should not be taken as a community in the strict sense. Preliminary

observations have shown that collecting tweets which use any of the four hash tags

(#zimelections,) would not only portray an online community but important insights on who

tweet, what they tweet and for what intended purpose. According to Messina (2007a:5),

while the hashtag community implies that the “hashtag participants share specific interests,

are aware of and deliberately engaging with one another which may not always be the case.

Indeed at their simplest, hash tags are merely search based mechanism for collating all

tweets sharing a textual attribute without any implication that individual messages are

responding to one another.” However, this research does not simply identify hash tags but

use them as means to filter tweets so that only those relevant to the topic, event or issue

(Zimbabwe elections in July 2013) are collected. In addition, the tweets shall also be

analysed for the establishment of community by looking at various user generated markers

such as @mentions, @reply and retweet (usually denoted by RT preceeding a rebroadcast

tweet). Hash tags represent rapidly forming and dissolving ad hoc publics that attend to

matters of shared concern that are “emergent, constituted through discourse and

affect….varied in intensity and temporarity” (Bruns & Burges: 2012:8). Messina (2007a)

isolates the use of the hash tag as an innovative way to include as many people in a

discussion as possible. Using hash tags removes discussions from being “ping – ponged

between one or more individuals, with the daisy @ replies,” (Messina, 2007a) to include

anyone who may be following the discussion. The use of hash tags allows for users to track

the topic independent of whether the message (tweet) originate from the account they follow.

The use of a hashtag is a deliberate efforts that “signals a wish to take part in a wider

communicative process potentially with anyone interested in the same topic,” (Bruns &

Hallvard, 2014:18). Scholars (see Bruns, 2010; Hermida, 2010; Messina, 2007a) have

reasoned that Twitter hash tags are used for sharing information (gatewatching) and

audiencing (shared experience of major events), which was also confirmed by the

preliminary study as hash tags were used to post opinions, links and news about the 2013

election in Zimbabwe. The online discourses form context based networks (in this case

7 Castells (2004:2) posits that a network society is a society whose social structure is made of networks powered by micro-electronics based on information communication techologies. These network societies offer an interactive system which features feedback effects and communications from anywhere to anywhere within the network (Castells, 2009: 7).

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around the hash tags) and there are different levels of interactivity. Twitter provides “some

explicit evidence for community participation to measure the extent to which contributors to

any hash tag are actively responding to one another, by sending one another publicly visible

@ replies or retweeting each other’s message,” (Messina, 2007:6). This means that the

architecture of the Twitter platform allows for an analysis on the volumes of such replies and

retweets8

It is important to probe the representativeness of the Twitter network as the participants may

not reflect the complexity of society (Nguyen, 2010) but form exclusive networks of

interested individuals, what Benkler (2006:2004) terms “discourse elitism.” Fuchs

(2014b:199) further points to the stratification patterns which affect the accumulation of

reputation, visibility and attention of a few. “Twitter’s reality is one of asymetric visibility, its

democratic potentials are limited by the reality of stratified attention and the visibility

characteristic of a capitalist culture.” Examining how Twitter facilitate political participation in

Zimbabwe will yield important insights on claims by cyber-optimists that social media offer

alternative, affordable and cost effective platforms for public participation within repressive

societies (see Starbird & Palen, 2012; Shirky, 2011; Mungiu-Pippidi & Munteanu, 2009). In

addition, the study of the collected tweets with the four identified hash tags allows one an

opportunity to observe and ascertain the dynamics within publics that form around an event

or a topic of discussion. Observing such dynamics also “offer perspectives on the interaction

of the community with other communicative spaces beyond Twitter itself and on the relative

importance of such spaces in all they put to the overall shape of the event,”

(Messina,2007:7). As such, it is expected that this research shall give important insights

pertaining to the nature of the discourse that took place through Twitter during the 2013

elections in Zimbabwe. It should, however, be mentioned that this research not only analyse

the text, as collated from the four hash tags but also looks at the the socio-technological

setting. This, following on Fuchs’ (2014a) argument on the asymetrical and hierarchical

nature of social media platforms, allows for a critical analysis of the entire network society.

Such an approach is supported by Passmann, Boeschoten and Schafer (2014:334) who

argue that “because of Twitter’s social network infrastructure and hierarchies, anyone

attempting to explain how circulation is conducted cannot only focus on content.” This entails

employing and manipulating various Twitter metrics for a closer and detailed analysis of the

nature of the community that discussed elections on Zimbabwe in 2013. This shall be

discussed in detail below under methodology.

8 When a Twitter user rebroadcasts another tweet to his or her followers.

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B. 3 Theoretical points of departure and research questions

Theorising mass media remains problematic as the field is characterised by fragmentation

and insufficient coherence (Dahlgren, 2005). Chaffee and Metzger (2001:374) question the

validity, applicability and relevance of mass communication theories assuming “a centralised

mass media system” within a “decentralised and demassified” environment. Social media

enables more diversified content, more world views and no clearly identifiable mainstream

rendering some mass media theories irrelevant. As a result of these changes, it is vital to

set the communication processes beyond “the realm of mass communications,

acknowledging thus a wider field of its practice, where communication process is addressed

not only in representative terms (for the people) but in participatory terms as well (by the

people)” (Vatikiotis, 2005:4).

New media platforms provide new opportunities to various groups and give power to people

whose agendas would not have been reported in major mass media. Power is moved from

elites to a greater proportion of media users, thus eliminating induced hegemony (Chaffee &

Metzger, 2001). Social media is interactive, fluid and individualised with an emphasis on

connectivity (Gunkel, 2005:1). The push towards “social interaction in content production and

distribution favours the emergence of new media models, centred on gathering of individuals

into variously articulated and distributed communities” (Mattina, 2008:1). Social media

platforms have a dialogical complexity lying in their “flexibility that communicators often have

with regard to where to post messages, who to engage with and the language to use during

interaction” (Rambe, 2012:297).

New communication technology developments have provided infrastructure for the support

and encouragement of political action, and these create arenas for the free engagement of

citizens in deliberation and public debate (Vatikiotis, 2005:8). Christian Fuchs (2009) argues

that alternative media enable people to experience a much greater diversity of ideas, leading

to a democratic state of affairs. This creates a “networked public sphere” allowing for

individual autonomy and freedom as it breaks elite stranglehold on democratic discourse and

draws diverse interests and talents into the common arena (Benkler, 2006:23). Resultantly,

there is an active discussion of public issues from various points of views and the

participation of normally excluded viewpoints. Moreover, Dahlgren and Siapera (2007:3)

acknowledge that debates around the role of new communication technologies in increasing

public participation since the internet is considered as “supporting, advancing and

enhancing autonomous and democratic public spaces.” Such public spaces allow for the free

flow of information and unrestricted debate on issues and problems affecting societies.

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While acknowledging the role that ICTs play in society, critical theorists (see Fuchs, 2011;

Robert, 1999; Lovink, 2012), call for a critical theory of social media to enable a proper

analysis of the interplay between technology, media and society. Critical theory assumes

that media or technology have multiple potential effects on society and social systems that

can co-exist or stand in contradiction to each other (Fuchs, 2009), a point that has to be

underlined for this research. The realisation of the potential depends on how society,

interests, power structures and struggles shape the design and usage of technology in

multiple ways that are potentially contradictory. Furthermore, Dahlgren and Siapera (2007:6)

underline the main focus of critical theorists saying critical theorists point out that the

corporations colonise cyberspace and promote dominant discourses and instrumental

politics. As such, this research takes a critical theoretical approach and analyse how

Twitter as both media and technology was used and how it facilitated public participation in

the 2013 elections in Zimbabwe. In so doing, one has to avoid the sweeping, one sided and

subjective assumptions by cyber optimists that technology adoption brings certain and

positive changes to society and the “deterministic assumption that technology has its own

logic of development and is an invariant element that once introduced bends the recipient

social system to its imperatives” (Freenberg, 2002:183). One has to “decentre the analysis

from technology” (Fuchs, 2012:387), which is the context , to also look at the context (the

tweets).

Critical theory questions if online participation “...at some point spill over and leave the virtual

realm, as the popularity of dating sites seems to suggest…” (Lovink, 2012:3). This point is

taken further by Schafer (2013:14) who questions the emancipatory element of social media

platforms as they have been “integrated into new business models and are now

subsequently subject to corporate control”. This, according to Fuchs (2009), is where critical

theory critiques the information, media, communication, culture and technology and their role

in contemporary capitalism. By adopting critical theory, one is able to question and provide

alternatives to technological determinism and causal relationships of media and technology

on one hand and society on another (Fuchs, 2009:387). Furthermore, critical theory has “a

normative dimension – it argues that it is possible to logically provide reasonably grounded

arguments about what a good society is, that the good society relates to conditions that all

humans require to survive,” (Fuchs, 2014b:13).

Fuchs (2011:19) further posits that critical theory allows for the analysis and questioning of

“domination, inequality, societal problems, exploitation in order to advance social struggles

and liberation from domination so that a dominationless, cooperative and participatory

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society can emerge.” This tallies well with Robert (1999:148), who urges critical theorists to

articulate, question and openly discuss differing assumptions about the objective world.

Fuchs (2014b:13) citing Ben Agger (2006:4) argues that critical theory is premised on seven

foundations which can be summarised as:

i) Critique of positivism and assumption that theory is value free

ii) It argues for a better future without domination and exploitation

iii) It sees domination as a social problem

iv) It assumes that human beings living in structures of domination tend to

reproduce these structures of false consciousness

v) It is interested in everyday life such as family or workplace

vi) Conceives structure and agency as dialectical

vii) Sees liberation as a process that must be accomplished by the oppressed

and exploited

An analysis of the seven pillars where critical theory stands shows that critical theory takes a

deeper look at the structure of society, the exploitation that obtains therewith as well as how

the exploited classes of society fight to liberate themselves from these shackles.

Furthermore, critical theorists question how technology is employed and exploited for the

furtherance of these struggles for emancipation. Such critical theorists are aware of the limits

placed by “state surveillance and control, massive inequalities in resources to participate

online (Dahlberg & Siapera, 2007:6).

Network theorists, including Castells (1996; 2009) and Van Dijk (1999), have shown how

various networks emerged with social media use. The growth of new information

communication technologies (ICT), according to Van Dijk (1999:23-25), have generated a

complex social and communicative structure that is very different from the mass society.

These social networks offer “an interactive system which features feedback effects and

communications from anywhere to anywhere within the network” (Castells, 2009: 7) and

anyone with the right technology can publish opinions in “real time to mass audiences”

(Luoma-aho, 2011:3).

The internet, as Dick and McLaughlin (2013) point out, “is a structure that radically unmoors

the communication points of the network from centralised control. This has a significant

impact on the social media platforms that a built around the decentralised structure of the

internet. Social media differs from unidirectional traditional media by allowing the sending

and receiving of messages thus enabling “mass self communication” (Castells, 2009:56)

which is “a more horizontal style of communication without a hierarchy” (Lilleker & Jackson,

2008: 6). Horizontal communication allows the “forging of weak ties with strangers” to

establish networks “where social characteristics are less influential in framing or even

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blocking communications” (Castells, 1996: 388). Additionally, the non-hierarchical and

decentralised character of the social media platforms enable communication between people

who would otherwise have not been active in political discussions and increase opportunities

for non-professionals to disseminate their thoughts over a wide geographical area (Vergeer

& Hermans, 2008:38). Castells (1996:469) sees a major shift from statism concentrated

bureaucracy and hierarchies organised along national lines to a system whose “structural

logic is made of adaptable information communication technologies networks spread across

the globe influencing social life” unlimited by national and political boundaries. This system

logic (Castells, 3000:375) is however discriminatory as “a considerable number of humans,

probably in a growing proportion, are irrelevant both as producers and consumers.” This

means that in as much as the new information and communication technologies have

created platforms for the establishment of networks, technology may also increase social

polarisation with certain black holes in informational capitalism (Castells, 2000:367) who may

include people in lack of equipment, tools or training to access or use information

technology. In the global network society, everything has a value and “anything or anyone

who has no value or becomes devalued is excluded from the network in a variable geometry

of global dynamism and local despair,” (Castells, 2009:IX). Notwithstanding these black

holes, Castells (2012) strongly believes that the networks have a potential to transform

societies and attributes the Arab Spring to such networks stating that:

“It (the revolutions) began on the internet social networks, as these are spaces of

autonomy, largely beyond the control of government and corporations…..By sharing

sorrow and hope, in the free public space of the internet, by connecting with one

another and by envisioning projects from multiple sources of being, individuals

formed networks regardless of their personal views or organisational attachment,”

(Castells, 2012:2)

The resultant networks comprise a set of actors or nodes along with a set of ties of a

specified type that link them (Borgatti & Halgin, 2011:2). Some scholars, however, take the

emphasis on the nodes within networks as the approach’s major undoing. Mejias (2006b)

argues that the “networks undermines the productive forms of sociality by over-privileging

the node. To the extent that the network is composed of nodes and connection between

nodes, it discriminates against the space between the nodes; it turns this space into a black

box, a black spot.”

Furthermore, Mejias (2006b) argues that the internet reinforces the stay-in-network concept

as one has to remain in the network and adapt the network’s ontology of what constitute a

node or risk being left out. “The scientific explanations of social realities as networks flatten

13

the richness of symbolism and replace it with causality, reducing interaction to economic

exchange governed purely by interests.

This returns us to the questions posed by other critical theorists on the role of those outside

the said networks. It shows that this approach potentially leaves out other non-nodal players

who may be critical. While acknowledging these weaknesses, this research focuses

specifically on the ad hoc network that emerged during the 2013 general elections in

Zimbabwe. This is not to discount the role of those outside the said community.

As such, this study analyses network patterns around selected Twitter hash tags on

Zimbabwe’s 2013 elections to reveal the social relationships in terms of nodes (actors) and

ties (how they are linked). The use of a hash tag (# followed by a word) marks a theme and

makes tweets discoverable, thus forming ad hoc publics or networks (Bruns & Burges,

2012). For the 2013 Zimbabwe elections, the researcher identified four important and widely

used hash tags namely (#zimelections, #zimdecides2013, #zimelection and #zimdecides.)9

There are other hash tags which that may have been used but were not as popular as the

identified four thus their contribution to the discourse could be insignificant.

A preliminary study has shown that network theory is applicable to the networks which

emerged as a result of Twitter use during the 2013 elections. It was evident that Twitter

users, employing the four hash tags mentioned above, established a communicative

structure allowing those with the right technology to publish opinions. It is very easy to

identify the “horizontal communication” (Lilleker & Kackson, 2008:6), like when Twitter users

make use of the @reply or @address and “interactive systems which features feedback

effects and communications” (Castells, 2009:7) such as through the use of @reply and

retweet.. Twitter is based on networks and interactivity and can be valuable for public

participation in Zimbabwe because of the “weak ties and anonymity” (Castells, 1996:388)

they provide. Anonymity on Twitter at times is a contentious issue but may serve in

environments where citizens fear or are aware of surveillance. As Castells (2009:263 – 264)

argues, one result of social media in repressive regimes is the emergence of insurgent

communities as individuals perceiving an oppression “transform their shared protest into a

community of practice, their practice being resistance”. Resultantly, these networks facilitate

public participation in political processes, for example elections.

9 A hash tag, which also functions as a search string, connects a tweet to larger themes . The identification entailed going through tweets to identify commonly used #tags. Initially seven hash tags; #zimvote, #zimdecides, #zimelections, #zimelection, #zimdecides2013, zimelection2013, zimvote2013 of which the four mainly used were selected.

14

Verba, Scholzman & Brady (1995) define public participation in political processes as an

activity that has the intent or effect of influencing government action or selection of people

who make policies. Online political participation may include: writing opinions, comment, or

posting a link with a view to influence the selection of policy makers or government position.

This means that posting hash tagged tweets, for example, #zimelection, may constitute

political participation.

Research Questions

Flowing from the theoretical points of departure a general research question is formulated:

How did Twitter facilitate public participaton in the election of a new government in

Zimbabwe in 2013?

Following from the general research question are four specific research questions:

1) Who initiated key discourses on Zimbabwe’s elections within the Twitter community?

2) Which portions of society were addressed in the Twitter discourse during the 2013

elections?

3) Which topics or themes were addressed within the Twitter community and what were

their broader social, cultural and political context?

4) Did the Twitter users who conversed on elections in Zimbabwe in 2013 demonstrate

key features of a “network society?”

B.4 Research design and methods

Research design

Critical Discourse Analysis, a qualitative method, whose origins is in critical theory, will

be used to analyse data. Critical Discourse Analysis (henceforth CDA), is an approach that

focusses on “how social relations, identity, knowledge and power are constructed through

written and spoken texts in communities, schools, the media and the political arena”

(Fairclough, 1989:20). CDA is an analytic tool that can be used “in the close readings of

editorials, op-eds, columns, adverts and other public texts” (Huckin, 2002:4), thus including

social media posts, I would argue. CDA emphasises the relationship between what is

communicated and the social realities tied to that communcation and as Milner (2013:2363)

points out, CDA is focussed on:

15

intertextual and interdiscursive relationship in public commentary which is a bridge by

which statements can be recontextualised, transferred from one setting to another in

order to create a juxtaposition, produce a metaphor or posit a universal truth

CDA is an approach to text that “treats linguistic and visual choices on screen as subtle

indicators of media technology to represent the world to us and orient others towards the

world,” (Chouliraki, 2008:674)

As Hacker and Van Dijk (2000) argue, social media posts allow for public discourse without

limits of time, place or other physical conditions enabling citizens to seek to address socio-

economic issues that matter to them. Chouliaraki (2008:696) states that CDA is a context

specific and historically sensitive approach to media text “that treats the linguistic visual

choices as subtle indicators of power of the media technology to represent the world to us

and to orient us towards this world”. CDA shows that discourse takes the form of either of

three critiques namely: ideological critique, that looks at the effects of semiosis (the use of

signs for communication) on social relations; rhetorical critique, which looks at how

discourse is used for manipulation (or persuation); and strategic critique, which looks at how

semiosis figures within the strategies pursued by groups of social agents to change society

in a particular direction.

Van Leeuwen and Wodak (1999:11) argue that discursive acts are socially constituive in a

number of ways and that “they play a decisive role in the genesis, production and

construction of certain social conditions,to restore or justify a certain social status quo, …

reproducing the status quo or destructive of status quo”. Discursive acts can thus be distilled

to four sociological macro-functions, namely constructive, perpetuating, transformation and

destructive macro-strategies of discourse. These categories will be used in the analysis of

tweets (see discussion below).

Wodak (2010) points out that CDA focuses on larger units than isolated words and

sentences and to look at the discourses, texts, conversations and the communicative events.

Wodak (2010) suggests recursive steps which could be followed when using CDA for

qualitative research. The eight steps are: consulting with preceding theoretical knowledge;

systematic collection of data with a focus on genres/topics, themes and texts; the selection

and preparation of data; specification of the research question; a qualitative pilot analysis; a

detailed analysis of the data; the formulation of a critique, and finally the application of the

detailed analytical results. This study is guided by these eight recursive steps, but it will not

16

necessarily be applied in the order listed above, depending on practical challenges and

circumstances.

Data Collection

Adopting CDA as a tool to collect and analyse Twitter presents opportunities to work with

huge data sets on human communication around a certain issue, what Karpf (2012:10) calls

“a siren song of abundant data”. boyd and Crawford (2012:669) note that researchers

working on Twitter are not getting the “firehose” of the complete content stream, but merely a

“gardenhose” of very limited number of tweets. This means that this study had to come up

with mechanisms to “trap” and archive the data and employ data collection methods that

improve representativeness of sampled data.

Twitter only keeps tweets available to the public for at most 10 days. This researcher uses

TAGS v5, an open source tweet collecting tool that automatically archives tweets around a

given hash tag in the form of a Microsoft Excel document. Archiving content allays critical

questions raised by scholars such as boyd and Crawford (2012:666) who rightly point out

that “big data’ sources including Twitter have very poor archiving and search functions

“consequently, researchers are much more likely to focus on something in the present or

immediate past.” TAGS v5 collects a maximum 18 000 tweets around a hash tag, and for the

purposes of this research, a new file was created each time the collected tweets neared the

limit. Tweets are archived by date in descending order. Tweets were collected over 51 days,

starting 25 days prior to voting day (on 31 July 2013) and continuing for 25 days after10.

This method of data collection is unobtrusive. Using a specific hash tag to collect tweets

means that tweets which were not preceded by the # sign may not be collected. However, it

has to be stated that TAGS v5 allows the collection of tweets using a given word as a search

operative. This research did not use any word as a search operative, but chances are high

that some collected tweets may not have contained any of the four hash tags but collected

as a result of the keywords used which fall within the search operative. The collected hash

tagged tweets are all public conversation, meaning that private tweets were not collected for

analysis. TAGS v5 collects an average 90% of all public tweets on a given hash tag or

search operative, which is close to a gardenhose that boyd and Crawford (2012) call for.

Collecting tweets around the four identified hash tags is a form of filtering which is an

important research designs choice because it effectively streamlines the empirical focus of

the study (Gonzalez-Bailon, Kaltenbrunner & Banchs, 2010:3). Using pre-defined hash tags

means the filtering process follows certain content, thus giving a more focussed scope,

10 The period was selected as it best describes voting period.

17

maximising the relevance of information retrieved and enhancing the relevance of the

estimation to be made out of the collected tweets. Bruns and Moe (2014:25) state that

“methodologically, it is considerably more difficult to move beyond the relatively well

behaved confines of macro-layer hash tag studies,” and this research takes the more

convenient route. Another filter could have been using the location of the user, geolocation,

which brings challenges as only 30%11 of the Tweeter platform users mention their location.

Following Bruns and Stieglitz (2013), this research identifies a catalogue of metrics to

describe communicative patterns which can be observed for each of the four hash tags.

The “rich” structured data collected in this manner will be coded and analysed to establish

how Twitter facilitated participation in the 2013 elections.

Data coding and analysis

Data coding, which is a “systematic way in which to condense extensive data sets into

smaller analysable units through the creation of categories and concepts derived from the

data” (Lockyer, 2004:1) makes information manageable and sensible. All coding for this

research shall be manual. Following Wodak’s (2010) recursive steps, the first step during

data analysis entails identifying the actors in the network. Actors shall be distinct users who

would be sorted into categories (a preliminary study has shown that actors’ categories

include media organisations, non-media organisations, media employees, activists,

politicians and celebrities).This categorisation shall be done on 100 top Twitter users. TAGS

v5 has a built in functionality allowing arrangement of Twitter users of a given hash tag in

order of number of tweets contributed. Categorisation shall be done by manually going to the

profile information of each of the top 100 users and where they are tweeting from (time

stamp and location). It is important, where possible, to mention the geographic location of

the profile user, that is to see the “Zimbabweaness” of each tweet. Starbird(2012) has

estimated that only 30 percent of tweets during the Arab spring in Egypt originated from the

country. In the event that the profile does not show who the user is, then an additional

category (other) shall be used.

This first step will enable one to code data and it will be tabulated as:

Rank Twitter profile

name

Gender Location Category (who

are they)

Number of

tweets

11 100 Twitter users contributing to the four hash tags were selected from the data set. The selection followed generating 100 numbers between 1 and n (n being the total number of unique users). A user whose position corresponded to the generated number was selected and a basic count was made on those who mentioned their location.

18

The initial step is crucial in answering Research Question 1 (RQ1) as it gives detail on who

are the Twitter users who made use of the four hash tags discussed above. By answering

who the Twitter users are, we are looking at the gender, geographic location (if given) and

profile of the user (that is whom they say they are). This is important in ascertaining who was

tweeting. It is important to identify the unique users as well as get to know how much they

contributed in relation to the total number of tweets and see if discourse is not dominated by

certain individuals or interest groups. Additionally, Twitter metrics shall be analysed from the

data set. The metrics shall include quantifying the number of tweets per given hash tag and

the number of unique users contributing to the hash tag. The data set will then be analysed

for the number of @replies, the number of retweets and number of tweets with additional

links (urls) embedded in them. This helps answer RQ1 as well as give important insights into

RQ2.

Step two entails randomly sampling tweets and downsizing the data (coding). Random

sampling of the data which is stored as Excel format is easy as the program has an inbuilt

functionality to perform such a task and in this case 33 percent of tweets shall be selected.

The selected tweets shall then be manually categorised. From the preliminary research, the

possible categories are warning, announcement, incitement, opinion or a question. Each

tweet shall also be analysed for the form of the critique (ideological, rhetorical or strategic),

their sociological macro-functions (Van Leeuwen & Wodak, 1999:11) which are either

constructive, perpetuating, transforming or destructive macro-strategies of discourse (see

discussion above). Additionally textual analysis shall be employed to the 33 per cent of all

tweets to identify the theme, topic and tone. Resultantly, data shall be coded as shown by

the table below:

Tweet

(text)

Profile

of user

Category

of user

Category

of tweet

Form

of

critique

Sociological

macro-

strategy

Text

analysis

Comment

This step helps address RQ2 and RQ3 as it answers questions on the topics and themes

raised or discussed on the tweets collected as well as ascertaining who was addressed.

Important insights into who tweets may be lost when one randomises all tweets so it is also

important to complement this step by dividing the total number of unique users into three

groups comprising the 1% top users, then the next 9% and the remaining 90%. These

19

groups’ tweets will then be analysed separately, first by randomising them and then follow

step two above. This will give an opportunity to critically analyse the level of participation not

across the community but within groups and see if the results compare with the observations

from step two above.

To ascertain the nature of the network of Twitter users, there shall be an analysis of the

dialogical nature of the discourses. Using Twitter’s well defined mark-ups denoting a direct

reference or response to another user (an @ symbol followed by the username) and a

rebroadcast (when a user retweets someone else’s contribution denoted by RT preceding

the contribution), the research shall analyse how many of the tweets are original, how many

were retweeted and how many are a direct response/address to other users. As such, this

step helps in addressing RQ4 and RQ2, as the tweets are analysed for whom they address

as well as whether the discussion by the Twitter users around the four hash tags show

characteristics of a social network.

Ethical considerations

This research will be guided by the University of Stellenbosch ethics policy and the

researcher applied for ethical clearance prior to to its commencement. All tweets collected

for the purposes of this research, names of Twitter users and any correspondence with

Twitter users shall remain confidential and will not be shared with anyone outside the

precincts of this research.

B.5 Time framework and provisional chapter layout

Chapter 1 Introduction and Background (Four Months)

This proposal shall form the greater part of this chapter. As such, the refinement of this

proposal so that it becomes a chapter in a thesis will be done in four months. There will be

additional information to be added to the proposal and this explains the relatively longer

period required.

Chapter 2 Literature Review (Six Months)

Building on the literature that has been consulted during the preparation of this proposal,

Chapter 2 will be a detailed review of texts on i) the role that information technology plays in

democratisation ii) the role of new media in facilitating political participation iii) the role of

Twitter in facilitating political participation iv) the state of the traditional media and the role of

20

social media in Zimbabwe and how it facilitates political participation v) how CDA is used a

qualitative research analysis tool vi) recent trends and developments in researching on

social media and its role on enabling political participation.

Chapter 3 Theoretical Framework (Four Months)

This chapter will tackle the major theories on social media, critical theory, political

participation and how CDA can be used as a qualitative research tool.

Chapter 4 Research Methodology (Eight Months)

This chapter shall entail detailing the steps undertaken to clean up the data and the coding

thereof. Using the eight recursive steps cited above, the collected tweets will be broken

down into various categories.

Chapter 5 Analysis of Findings (Four Months)

Using CDA, this chapter will then analyse the data.

Chapter 6 Conclusion (Four Months)

B.6 Impact

This study joins the active discussions on how social media influences political participation

by exploring individual level usage of Twitter in Zimbabwe. This will give new insights

regarding the extent of the influence of social media in political participation in Zimbabwe.

B.7 Connection with the doctoral programme(s) of the department

This proposed research is on Media and Politics (specifically the media and Zimbabwe) a

focus area for the Journalism Department.

B.8 BudgetEnough financial resources have been secured from personal savings for the successful

completion of the research.

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Annex A

Internet coverage Zimbabwe. Source: https://www.econet.co.zw/services/coverage-maps

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