Social media platforms, Participation and Political Homophily in Zambia
The recurring themes of political violence in the recent past years in Zambia have been attributed to the rise in social media participation. Not long ago, Zambia was considered one of the most peaceful countries in the world. This was because of the smooth transition of political leadership since the emergence of the democratic era in the 1990s. As of today, Zambia might be the only country in Africa, if not in the world, that has witnessed the reign of three different political parties in less than 30 years. Scholars such as Chikulo (1991) attribute such peaceful transitions to the lower levels of engagement in politics among the public in Zambia. Studies have pointed to the fact that political participation in Zambia are multifaceted to include not only the process of how and why people get involved in politics (Chilcote, 1981) but also consisting of “those legal activities by private citizens that are more or less directly aimed at influencing the selection of government leaders” (Verba, Nir & Jae (1978). Such participation was mostly informed by individuals attending community meetings and rallies.
In their study, for example, Bratton, Alderfer, & Simutanyi (1997) found that Zambian voters’ participation was punctuated by three-dimensional elements: “Contacting, and Communing, Voting”. According to the authors, community-based action and face-to-face interactions with political representatives (contacting) were regarded as more important than the messages they received from the media (Baldwin, 2013). Unfortunately, or rather, fortunately, most of such community activities were dominated by public opinion leaders who decided on behalf of their communities. Further, other studies have shown that institutional arrangements such as chiefdoms, tribal and religious affiliations, were the second important in characterizing how people chose to vote for one candidate over the other: Voter registration and political party membership were not a driving factor. This argument affirms Gondwe (2018)’s recent study on whether people in Zambia voted based on policy or not. Gondwe’s findings indicated that policy did not matter for the Zambian people because their decisions were influenced by either the living conditions or the tribe of the candidate they were voting for. His findings indicated that many people in Zambia were inclined to vote on tribal lines. Today, such forms of interactions have been expanded in an event where individuals can now participate online while settled in their own comfort zones.
Since the advent of social media platforms, a number of people, especially the youth have emerged to actively participate in the ongoing debates. Whether their voices do indeed meddle into the decisions of government policies and political elites is still a question of interest. Studies have shown that social media platforms are nothing more than the elite politicians setting the agenda and allowing the audience to participate in that agenda (Oyedele, 2017). Others still hinge on the traditional approaches that perceive social media as a panacea to the 'gatekeeper' who in the past years had the power to open and close the gates for content not only emanating from the public audience but the journalists as well (Mabweazara, 2015, 2014b).
Against such a backdrop is the question of media content and discussion. Do SNS platforms allow individuals to participate in government agendas or are they platforms for hate and tribal homophily? In a study conducted in Zambia, Gondwe (2019, under review material) indicated that most messages on social media platforms run by political leaders were neutral, but negatively exacerbated by participants and later proliferated by algorithms of bots and trolls. In other words, participants on SNS were not free to participate online yet their participation was characterized by the character assassination of the opposition leader and his/her followers. Such behaviors create negative sentiments that are further proliferated by bots and trolls. These are later translated into violence when individuals meet face-to-face.
Overall, the fact that social media has allowed the majority of individuals in Zambia to participate in governance through SNS, the participants tend to fall under two major criticism. First, most social media platforms are owned by political elites that seek to advance a certain narrative – and that individuals do not create content but participate in the one created. Second, the participation process is characterized by tribal hate – an ideology that has existed among tribal lines in Zambia. Initially, such homophilic tendencies were controlled by the lack of opportunities to contact and other political strategies such as “one-party democratic state and the intention to encourage intermarriages” designed by President Kenneth Kaunda. However, social media has made it easier for such tribes to interact and extend their hate from SNS to physical contact, and thus violence during political rallies and campaigns.
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