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Texting, tweeting, mobile Internet - New platforms for democratic debate in Africa
Fesmedia Africa
July 27, 2011

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Summary

New media platforms are changing how people communicate with each other around the world. However, there is great variation in both the kind of communication platforms people make use of as well as in how they access these platforms. Computer ownership and internet access are still the prerogative of the wealthy few in wide swathes of the African continent. All the same, mobile internet access is on the rise and if current growth rates continue, African mobile phone penetration will reach 100 per cent by 2014.

Mobile phone penetration rates, in particular, have resulted in a plethora of ideas for new media platforms aimed at bridging the information divide between the well-connected and the disconnected. Topic areas range from agriculture and conservation to health and human rights. In addition to mobile phone-based platforms, there is also a number of promising internet-based ones.

Both mobile phones and the internet provide exciting new opportunities for one-to-one as well as one-to-many communication. Newly empowered citizen journalists now report on issues and events relevant to their own communities. Political activists take to the web to gather support and organise rallies. Increasingly, ordinary citizens take on tasks previously carried out by professionals.

One concern raised in this context is the matter of quality standards and a code of ethics. There is a feeling among some professional journalists that average citizens are unable to report in a professional manner because of their lack of training. However, experience has shown that journalistic training is not able to guarantee good conduct at all times. Even with relevant codes of ethics in place, countries like Rwanda and Kenya have seen hate campaigns sanctioned by traditional media outlets in the past. The promotion of media literacy and educational measures may therefore be more suited to tackle these issues.

International development agencies can become active in a number of ways in order to support the recent development in new media platforms. Promoting media literacy, lobbying for affordable mobile phone and broadband tariffs and increasing the audiences of alternative citizen media are just some of the possible fields of activity.

Introduction

Much has been said and written in recent years about the potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for international development cooperation and the new media landscapes they have helped shape around the globe. In an initial phase, the sheer scope of practical applications of ICTs in the development context sent experts and laymen alike into a state of euphoria. This excitement, however, died down soon enough and gave way to the realisation that crucial obstacles on the technology-powered road towards development had been ignored. A stage of disillusionment and re-assessment followed.

A recent working paper from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) evaluates the organisation's work in the field of ICTs and media and reaches a series of conclusions that amount to a paradigm shift. According to the authors of the study, technology itself is not suited to make a difference in the practice of international development. It is rather "the economic and social processes behind the technology that drive [ . . . ] the change. Thus, ICTs are instrumental, not a goal in [themselves].This realisation represents a shift away from previous thinking which underscored the significance of new technologies to the development context without providing relevant strategies to implement them in a meaningful manner.

One phenomenon which has been linked to both the proliferation of new technologies as well as an underlying social change in human societies is the rise of social media. Karim Khashaba, an Egyptian political analyst and researcher, traces a shift towards a greater degree of openness in the relationships of young people in Egypt. Research conducted under the auspices of the British Council showed that "some [young Egyptians] were seizing the virtual space to better express themselves away from the 'restrictions' they faced in reality, or 'offline', especially in terms of politics and opposite-sex relationship issues. Research also showed that such practices online could have knock-on effects in the real world.

Other authors have cast doubt on the ability of online phenomena to transcend into offline reality. Appraising the role of social media in the context of social movements, Malcolm Gladwell of the New Yorker argues that due to their weak group ties and general lack of hierarchy, Facebook, Twitter and others are unlikely to spark social revolution. Interestingly, the on-going upheavals in the Arab world seem to be benefitting in no small measure from the level of connectivity supplied by social media. However, the involvement of these new communication platforms in the precipitation of change is largely incidental and unpremeditated. Facebook and Twitter were not designed with political activism in mind. They just happen to provide astounding new opportunities for group communication.

As unrest gathers pace across the African continent, seemingly spreading to countries south of the Sahara, the significance of social media as perceived by African governments is highlighted by measures such as the banning of Twitter's SMS service by Cameroonian authorities. In order to pre-empt popular uprisings in the run-up to the presidential elections in 2011, Cameroon forced mobile phone operator MTN to end its partnership with Twitter. The micro-blogging website had previously provided a service to Cameroonian users allowing followers to subscribe to automatic SMS updates. This meant that twitterers could reach their followers irrespective of whether those were online or not. As long as their mobile phones were active, followers were able to receive instant SMS updates from the users they followed on Twitter. This technology is said to have played a significant role in the coordination of the Egyptian protests that led to the ousting of Hosni Mubarak.

Prior to the Twitter SMS ban, Cameroon had already seen its own protests on 23 February 2011 when the government enforced a total media blackout which had international media outlets resorting to Twitter for news coverage on the ongoing events in the country. However, as Dibussi Tande points out, the Cameroonian government failed to understand the true nature of the news breach as 95% of the tweets which the international media relied on for updates did not originate from within Cameroon. It was information obtained via mobile phones, regular SMS and email which ended up on Twitter and not real-time tweets from activists on the ground.

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