Jesus Comes to South Africa: Black Twitter as Citizen Journalism in South African Politics

Mpofu, Shepherd

doi:10.1080/23743670.2019.1610782

Cited by 19 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…For example, multiple users joked about being, literally, trash – sharing pictures of dumpsters and bins. While these tweets could be interpreted at first as trivializing the #MenAreTrash movement, it is a common feature of South African Twitter to have political discussions intertwined with more inane content (Mpofu, 2019). Furthermore, there was a sense of spectatorship among some of these users, who were making comments and jokes about the trend itself rather than getting actively involved in the discussion.…”

Section: Findings and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Limitations of Hashtag Feminist Activism on South African Twitter: A Case Study of #MenAreTrash and #WomenAreTrash

RENESES

Bosch

2023

Men and Masculinities

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Social media has become a central arena for debates around feminism and gender in South Africa. One recent example can be found in the hashtag #MenAreTrash, which has been a trending topic multiple times on South African Twitter. However, despite the prevalence of gender-based violence in the country, these conversations have also come under strong criticism, especially from men. Existing literature on social media expressions of misogyny and anti-feminism has primarily focused on North American and European case studies. This article expands existing literature by analyzing men’s reactions to the #MenAreTrash hashtag and highlighting what this reveals about the role and backlash against feminism in South Africa. Based on a thematic analysis of 600 tweets, this article explores the discursive strategies employed by South African cisgender men on Twitter in response to the #MenAreTrash hashtag. Beyond some marginal yet relevant examples of reflexibility and allyship, the overwhelmingly negative response from men online, as found by the study, reflected a lack of self-reflection about their masculinity. The article provides additional insights into the role of digital feminist activism in shaping networked masculinities in the South African context.

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Section: Findings and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Limitations of Hashtag Feminist Activism on South African Twitter: A Case Study of #MenAreTrash and #WomenAreTrash

RENESES

Bosch

2023

Men and Masculinities

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“…The algorithmic logics of platform capitalism have been critiqued as inevitably prioritising profit at the expense of "truth", and as contributing to individual dispersion even as they seem to create community, meaning that our "understandings and experiences of reality are less and less shared" (Büscher, 2020: 171). And yet, when compared to the very uniform, hegemonic picture of conservation offered by the ONVs, the role of South African Twitter users to build a nuanced and agonistic counter-hegemonic narrative seems absolutely vital to the "political realignments" (Fraser, 2019;Mpofu, 2019) necessary to chart some kind of path out of the present impasse. And indeed, Büscher (2020: 180) concedes that the capitalist nature of the platform itself does not preclude the formation of "kernels that aim to condense to a bigger truth".…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While South Africa's virulent racial capitalism and centrality in neo-colonial flows of the international eco-tourism industry make the country a good case study for how global forces play out in a national context, the confluence of these forces is not unique (see Lunstrum et al, 2021; Mollett and Kepe, 2018, for other country cases). The South African context is however exemplary of the power of social media counter-publics to reframe, resist, and in certain cases even organise themselves to revolt against hegemonic media discourses (Mpofu, 2019; Mudavanhu, 2017). South African “Black Twitter” is an especially active site for the “political realignments” that presage the kinds of societal transformations Fraser envisages (see Mpofu, 2019).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The South African context is however exemplary of the power of social media counter-publics to reframe, resist, and in certain cases even organise themselves to revolt against hegemonic media discourses (Mpofu, 2019; Mudavanhu, 2017). South African “Black Twitter” is an especially active site for the “political realignments” that presage the kinds of societal transformations Fraser envisages (see Mpofu, 2019).…”

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confidence: 99%

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‘Without white people, the animals will go!’: COVID-19 and the struggle for the future of South African conservation

Burnett

2022

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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This article examines the potential for online activism to contest hegemonic neoliberal conservation models in South Africa, using the Covid-19 crisis as a window onto discursive struggle. National lockdown measures during the pandemic sent the vital tourism sector of an already fragile economy into deep crisis. Neoliberal and militarized conservation models, with their reliance on international travel, are examined as affected by a conjunctural crisis, the meaning of which was contested by a broad range of social actors in traditional and on social media. In 30 online news videos, racial hierarchies of land ownership and conservation labour geographies are reproduced and legitimated, as is a visual vocabulary of conservation as equivalent with guns, boots, and anti-poaching patrols. Here, hope is represented as residing in the increased privatization of public goods, and the extraction of value from these goods in the form of elite, luxury consumption. In a corpus of posts on Twitter corpus, on the other hand, significant counter-hegemonic resistance to established neoliberal conservation models is in evidence. In their replies to white celebrity conservationist Kevin Pietersen, critical South African Twitter users offer a contrasting vision of hope grounded in anti-racist equality, a rejection of any special human-animal relations enjoyed by Europeans, and an articulation of a future with land justice at its centre. The analysis supports the idea that in the “interregnum” between hegemonic social orders, pathways towards transformed futures may be glimpsed as “kernels of truth” in discursive struggles on social media.

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“…In contrast, Liu et al ( 2015 ) took a more proactive approach. Journalists across the globe have taken a keen interest in the abuse of Twitter by President Trump and have written about the danger of using Twitter irresponsibly and the impact it will have on the safety of countries and their citizens (Buccus 2020 ; Haffagee 2019 ; Mpofu 2019 ; Smith 2017 ; Toosi 2016 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Habermasian analysis of reports on Presidential tweets influencing politics in the USA

Albertus

Makoza

2022

Int Polit

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Over the last decade, there has been rapid growth in instant messaging platforms, e.g. WhatsApp, Twitter and Instagram. Academic research on the use of instant messaging platforms is growing, but few studies have looked at the influence instant messaging could have on politics and the impact on world peace. Drawing on the Theory of Communication Action, this paper interrogated the discourses of using Twitter in the context of the USA. Media reports and tweets were analysed using validity claims to check communication distortions or misinformation that could impair the decision-making of policymakers and the public. The American President used Twitter to communicate potentially dangerous messages to American society. It was interesting to note that Twitter decided to fact-check tweets in response to the call from the community at large to have the account shut down.

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Jesus Comes to South Africa: Black Twitter as Citizen Journalism in South African Politics

Cited by 19 publications

References 37 publications

The Limitations of Hashtag Feminist Activism on South African Twitter: A Case Study of #MenAreTrash and #WomenAreTrash

The Limitations of Hashtag Feminist Activism on South African Twitter: A Case Study of #MenAreTrash and #WomenAreTrash

‘Without white people, the animals will go!’: COVID-19 and the struggle for the future of South African conservation

Habermasian analysis of reports on Presidential tweets influencing politics in the USA

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