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Paper short abstract

This paper utilises Sen’s “development as freedom” to study how the #FixTheCountry Movement in Ghana (2021 - 2025) expanded digital citizenship whilst disinformation, misinformation and gendered online violence as well as cybersecurity governance produced new “unfreedoms” that chilled participation.

Paper long abstract

Sen’s “development as freedom” shifts attention from economic indicators to the real freedoms that people enjoy relatively to speech, expression, organise and influencing public policy. This paper deploys that lens to Ghana’s digital public space from 2021 to 2025, interrogating how digital citizenship expanded agency while digital authoritarianism narrowed it. This study examines three interconnected scenarios:

1.#FixTheCountry Movement’s adoption of hashtags, livestreams, and online deliberations to mobilise support and advocate for accountability and socio-economic justice; 2. The intensification of coordinated electoral disinformation and misinformation despite citizen-led verification and fact-checking efforts during the 2024 election cycle and

3.The consolidation of state regulatory power through data protection, cybersecurity, and communications governance and how these policy frameworks shape perceived risks of speaking and organising online digital spaces.

The study applies a mixed qualitative design by conducting discourse analysis of movement and counter-movement framing, policy document analysis of relevant legal and institutional frameworks in Ghana and semi-structured interviews with activists, journalists, fact-checkers, and digital rights advocates. The analysis develops two concepts. “Digital freedom work” captures the practical labour through which citizens translate online participation into concrete claims on the state and other power holders. Whilst “Unfreedom production” captures how surveillance-adjacent mandates, disinformation, and online gender-based violence raise the costs of participation and narrowing who can safely act as a digital citizen.

The paper argues that Ghana symbolises a central development dilemma: digital tools can widen agency quickly, but these gains remain fragile when safeguards and accountability do not keep pace with evolving control mechanisms.