Global Media Journal: African Edition

From war journalism to peace journalism: Re-inventing peace journalism through audience oppositional reading of terrorism news online

David Katiambo — 2020-02-10

Coverage of terrorism can be categorized into either peace journalism or war journalism. Peace journalism highlights peace initiatives and tones down differences, while war journalism emphasizes differences, often legitimizing violence as the means to peace. This article analyses the war/peace journalism binaries by newspapers in reporting the 2015 terror attack on Kenya’s Garissa University. The article considers an oppositional reading of mainstream media through social media comments. By allowing opposition reading, social media enables the audience to challenge the war journalism that is prominent in mainstream media reporting of terrorism. While war journalism legitimizes violence as the key counter-terrorism strategy, peace journalism seeks to reveal the root causes of conflict. Although the concept of peace journalism is well grounded, its application to oppositional readings of terrorism news remains under-theorized because terrorism is still outside the bounds of what is considered legitimate war. Reporting from a war journalism perspective, the mainstream media focused on coverage that delegitimized terrorism and paid scant attention to alternative understandings of the event. . Contrary, comments on social media discussed terrorism from a peace journalism perspective, focusing on the root cause as well as possible solutions. As part of peace promotion efforts, this study proposes that journalists should be critical of the dominant knowledge structure and report terrorism from a peace journalism perspective.

Key words: Al-Shabaab, Peace journalism, terrorism, war, violence, media, news, social media, oppositional reading.

Social media, civil resistance, the Varakashi factor and the shifting polemics of Zimbabwe’s social media “war”

Charles Moyo — 2020-02-10

A recent increase in the rate of internet access and ICT devices in Zimbabwe has led to a surge in social media use by the citizenry. WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Instagram are the most popular social networking sites (SNS). Social movements have capitalised on these SNS to resist the ruling elite’s kleptocratic and tyrannical style of governance. Apart from individual online activists, social movements and campaigns that rely on social media that have emerged include; #Thisflag, #Tajamuka/Sesijikile, #ThisGown and #OccupyAfricaUnitySquare, and #ThisFlower. However, after President Robert Mugabe’s toppling through a “soft coup” by his generals, a new breed of vicious online activists called Varakashi emerged. Varakashi are pro-establishment (the “New Dispensation”), anti-progressive civil society and opposition parties, and seek to counteract Zimbabwe’s online activists who are inspired by democracy and human rights discourses. Accordingly, this article seeks to assess how social media platforms are used by social movements in Zimbabwe for the purposes of civil resistance and disobedience. The article also interrogates the “Varakashi effect” on Zimbabwe’s social media “war.” Crucially, the article embarks on a stock taking exercise to ascertain the drawbacks and prospects of social media use for civil resistance purposes by social movements in Zimbabwe. Existing literature on social media and politics tend to gravitate towards the “Arab Spring” and South Africa’s #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall movements. Therefore, this article affords attention to Zimbabwe’s social movements to bridge the aforementioned scholarly lacuna. Moreover, social media reliant movements and campaigns in Zimbabwe represent “a third force” outside government and party politics and therefore a phenomenon worth interrogation.

Key words: Social Media; Civil Resistance; Social Movements; Varakashi; Zimbabwe

Shaming Political Opponents: Extreme Speech and Scandal on a Nigerien Social Networking Site

Gado Alzouma — 2020-02-27

This paper examines the nature and characteristics of extreme speech and opprobrious language[1] presented in a Nigerien online setting, a Facebook page called “Affaire des bébés importés”[2], (Herein “Affaire des bébés importés” is translated from French to English, and the comparable term, “Baby-trafficking scandal Facebook page,” is then used for clarity)[3], by examining a series of events framed as “the baby-trafficking scandal”. These events gave rise to a myriad of linguistic inventions (jokes, insults, satire, cartoons, and different forms of humor). These had as their main intent an undermining of the moral authority of a political leader who was opposing the current government. The argument defended in the paper is the following: In countries like Niger, which are characterized by a fragile social cohesion and deep-seated ethnic rivalries, scandalizing adversaries through opprobrious language or extreme speech is more than an online expression of group divisions; it is also an avenue for transnational and deterritorialized communities to assert themselves in the political life of their countries of origin, thereby significantly altering the sharing of political authority. Actors involved in scandalizing activities use stigmatization, degradation, transgression, character assassination and other such attempts to undermine someone’s reputation. The paper is based on a qualitative analysis of videos, comments, and texts posted mainly on the Facebook page “Baby-trafficking scandal”.

[1] This paper uses the term “opprobrious language” as it was theorized by J. B. Thompson in his book, Political Scandal: Power and Visibility in the Media Age, Polity Press, 2000.

[2] The Facebook page "Affaire des bébés importés” can be found at : https://www.facebook.com/Affaire-Des-B%C3%A9b%C3%A9s-Import%C3%A9s-Au-Niger-277362069115861/posts/?ref=page_internal

[3] Seemingly, all posts, comments, captions, newspapers quotations, etc. have been translated from French into English by the author. Niger is a French-speaking country and most related written, visual, audio information is in French.