Social Media and Elections in Africa: A blessing or a curse?

Опубликовано 25 апреля 2022, 17:56

How are social media and digital technology shaping elections? This question is more important than ever, as an increasing number of countries – from Brazil to India to Nigeria - are said to have their "first WhatsApp" election. Yet relatively few studies have actually looked in-depth at the impact of social media and WhatsApp on the political landscape—even in Africa, where it is the dominant messaging platform. In this talk Professor Cheeseman will combine a case study of Nigeria’s 2019 elections with surveys and analysis from Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, and Sierra Leone to show how social media are used by parties, candidates and voters. He will argue that WhatsApp is a disruptive technology that challenges existing hierarchies in ways that are simultaneously emancipatory and destructive, strengthening and undermining democratic consolidation at the same time.

Prof. Nic Cheeseman (@fromagehomme) is Professor of Democracy at the University of Birmingham, and was formerly the Director of the African Studies Centre at the University of Oxford. He mainly works on democracy, elections and development, including a range of topics such as election rigging, political campaigning, corruption, “fake news” and presidential rule. The articles that he has published based on this research have won a number of prizes including the GIGA award for the best article in Comparative Area Studies (2013) and the Frank Cass Award for the best article in Democratization (2015). He presents to us this important conversation on social media and elections in Africa.

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