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- Convenors:
-
Tony Roberts
(Sussex University)
Tanja Bosch (University of Cape Town)
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- Formats:
- Papers Synchronous
- Stream:
- Business, finance and digital technologies
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 29 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
From hashtag campaigns to botnet disinformation, we are experiencing dramatic digital disruption of traditional deliberation and dialogue process. This panel examines who is using which technologies to both open and close civic space, with what impact for digital rights and sustainable development.
Long Abstract:
The space for government, civil society and the private sector to co-determine social policy is considered essential to sustainable development (SDG 16 and SDG 17). However most countries are experiencing "closing civic space" (CIVICUS 2019) a reality that denies citizens, especially those from marginalised groups, the space to participate fully in debates and decisions that govern their lives. Citizens have responded creatively to this closing of civic space by opening new civic space online, using mobile phones and social media platforms to voice their concerns and exercise rights guaranteed to them in constitutions, laws and treaties but being denied to them in practice.
Since the Arab Spring and Cambridge Analytica episodes governments have rushed to deploy an ever-widening range of tools and tactics to close this opening of civic space online. Government are using blogging regulation, social media taxes, bandwidth throttling, internet shutdowns, AI-surveillance, and the use of troll farms, cyborg armies and automated bot-nets to deploy disinformation, disrupt deliberation, drown-out dialogue and debate, and to dominate discourse.
Whether the subject is pandemic-prevention measures, climate-denial, ant-vaccination or gender/race hate, powerful interests are profiling citizens and covertly micro-targeting them with influence messages to determine referenda and elections, as well as shape an ever-broadening range of policy debates.
These are critical issues for development studies.
This panel invites papers examining how these dynamics are impacting sustainable development in countries currently under-represented in the existing literature.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 29 June, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the online engagements around the #ZimbabweanLivesMatter campaign to understand the ways that different actors have used digital technology to open up and close civic space.
Paper long abstract:
In August 2020 the hashtag #ZimbabweanLivesMatter went viral on social media platforms. Zimbabweans and their allies, at home and across the world sought to bring global attention to the spiralling crisis of misgovernance. The hashtag gained traction due to the coincidence of a number of factors. These included the strict Coronavirus lockdown which channeled protest into digital spaces, the widespread crackdown on government critics in July, as well as the global #BlackLiversMatter protests sparked by the horrific killing of George Floyd by police in May, 2020. At its peak the hashtag was tweeted over 750 000 times a day. Significantly, it led to the activation of the government’s own information operation apparatus as pro-government actors frantically sought to counter the messaging of the government’s critics. The online engagements around the hashtag #ZimbabweanLivesMatter brings into sharp relief the two central dimensions of the political uses of twitter in contemporary Zimbabwe. On the one hand, the use of social media to ‘speak truth to power’, and on the other, its use to obfuscate the truth in order to retain power. This paper examines the online engagements around the #ZimbabweanLIvesMatter campaign to understand the ways that different actors have used digital technology to open up and close civic space.
Paper short abstract:
Digital spaces can be powerful arenas for feminists to organise – yet they can also be a hostile environment where women face online misogyny and GBV. This paper conceptualises and expose the visible, hidden and invisible power in these socio-technical systems and infrastructures.
Paper long abstract:
Digital spaces can be powerful arenas for feminists to organise – yet they can also be a hostile environment where women face online misogyny, GBV and, increasingly, coordinated online attacks. The growth of an online ‘manosphere’ where an aggrieved masculinity is mobilised has seen feminists, LGBTQ activists, and human rights NGOs that support them positioned as enemies of ‘the people’. Globally we see that the specificities of the political beliefs of these groups vary; but share a common language. Harassment techniques “pioneered” in the manosphere are now used by governments and other state actors – showing the links between a global backlash against women’s rights and other manifestations of closing civic space online. Overall this leads to a chilling effect where women are frightened of speaking out online. In order to open up digital spaces for feminist activists and to ensure that women’s voices are not silenced we need to interrogate the power relations of the deliberately opaque technical systems which mediate our everyday social practices. The business models and architectures of data colonialism intended to maximise the sharing of content, tacitly facilitate abuse and harassment. This paper aims to conceptualise and expose the visible, hidden and invisible power (Miller, VeneKlasen, Reilly and Clark 2006) in these socio-technical systems and infrastructures. Beyond its conceptual value, this framework is intended to serve as prompts for new strategies, approaches and alliances to open up digital civic space.
Paper short abstract:
We focus on how Zimbabwean and Ugandan citizens engaged with political authorities during important political moments. In particular, we focus on the dynamics of engagement on Twitter during Uganda’s 2021 election, as well as during widely publicised Covid19-related corruption cases in Zimbabwe.
Paper long abstract:
Much of the literature on the role of social media platforms as spaces for civic and political participation points to a set of both enabling and limiting factors shaped by context. On the one hand, the digital ecologies present present the connected citizen with opportunities to talk back to power, mobilise across time and space and to be heard or make a difference. On the other, odds that include the digital divide, authoritarian restrictions to access, inordinate corporate practices among others are presented as the limits of citizen participation. This study focuses on Zimbabwe and Uganda to explore the ways in which citizen engagement with political power through digital media spaces was constituted during important political moments. In particular, we focus on the dynamics of engagement on Twitter during Uganda’s hotly-contested January 2021 election, as well as during widely publicised Covid19-related corruption cases in Zimbabwe in 2020. Both cases attracted substantial levels of citizen political deliberation and agitation online, as well as authoritarian state responses—in the Uganda case the shutting down of the Internet for a week. We seek to demonstrate that in the context of a shrinking civic space, citizens find creative and novel ways of asserting their right to be heard, talk back to power, and mobilise both locally and globally to amplify the case for political change. Equally, we demonstrate in this study the limited efficacy of such engagements, drawing on intersectional lenses to highlight the gender, class and historical dynamics shaping access to participation and development.
Paper short abstract:
Driven by the pandemic and the shift towards a ‘scientific election’, the hold of social media channels was just getting firmer as an avenue for economic and social livelihoods in Uganda. However, social media disruptions and a total internet shutdown quickly created an unsettling content vacuum.
Paper long abstract:
Social media is increasingly weaving itself into the social tapestry in Uganda. Driven by the pandemic and the shift towards a ‘scientific election’, the hold of social media channels was just getting firmer as an avenue for economic and social livelihoods, as well as political debate, and civic participation. However, disruptions to these channels of engagement in addition to a total internet shutdown placed a halt to this growth resulting in a content vacuum that extended offline.
The paper seeks to understand the impact of these digital disruptions in addition to further government driven actions including to digital citizenship in Uganda. Through a mix of literature review and social media analysis, it will look at what was shaping online narratives before and after the January 14, 2021 elections which was accompanied by the disruption to digital communication.
The Sustainable Development Goals 16 and 17 include among their targets, the promotion and enforcement of non-discriminatory laws and policies for sustainable development, and, the enhancement of policy coherence for sustainable development respectively. However, the realisation of these SDGs are at risk due to the continued affronts to digital rights - and consequently digital citizenship in Uganda.