Media, Social Movements, and Protest Cultures in Africa - by Lungile Tshuma & Trust Matsilele & Shepherd Mpofu & Mbongeni Msimanga (Hardcover)

About the Book

This collection explores diverse protest cultures in Sub-Saharan Africa, delving into motivations, tactics, and responses to protests. It sheds light on post-colonial regimes' brutality and highlighting movements striving for societal change.

Book Synopsis

Edited by Lungile Tshuma, Trust Matsilele, Shepherd Mpofu and Mbongeni Msimanga, Media, Social Movements, and Protest Cultures in Africa: Hashtags, Humor, and Slogans provides a rich array of protest cultures in Sub-Saharan Africa, delving into the motivations for protests, how protests are carried out and how those targeted by protests try to undermine the protesting movements. Organized into three parts, this book examines social media and social movements, online protest strategies, and media texts used in various protest movements within Sub-Saharan Africa. The contributors shed light on the brutality of various post-colonial regimes in Africa while also giving the reader hope for the current movements that seek to wrestle their societies from the jaws of autocratic leaders. This book offers a theoretically rich and methodologically diverse engagement of protest cultures in countries like Zimbabwe, Nigeria, and Ethiopia. The wide tapestry of how these protests are formulated and executed speaks to Africa's diversity and dynamism. This book makes an important intellectual contribution on social and political movements and is relevant to policy makers and researchers in the social sciences and digital humanities.

Review Quotes

"This wonderfully rich collection of research adds a powerful perspective to the study of media in society as an organic mechanism rather than an instrumental technology, subtly shaping the ways social movements and protest cultures have organized and evolved." --Mark Deuze, University of Amsterdam

"A captivating appraisal of protest movements in Africa edited by Lungile Tshuma, Trust Matsilele, Shepherd Mpofu, and Mbongeni Msimanga, whose knowledge of the continent coupled with unwavering commitment to empiricism has made them some of the leading voices in the field. Anyone researching social movements with a transnational theoretical approach needs to read this book." --Bruce Mutsvairo, Utrecht University

"Media, Social Movements, and Protest Cultures in Africa: Hashtags, Humor, and Slogans is an empirically rich volume, thick in description and illuminating examples of social movements in Africa and their mechanics of protest, ranging from their political instrumentalization of social media to the creative appropriation and use of popular cultural forms, such as music and satire. This book is a commendable addition to scholarship on protest cultures in Africa." --George Ogola, University of Nottingham

About the Author

Lungile Tshuma is researcher in the Centre for Communication and Culture at the Universidade Catolica Portuguesa.

Trust Matsilele is senior lecturer at Birmingham City University.

Shepherd Mpofu is associate professor of media and communication at the University of South Africa.

Mbongeni Msimanga is postdoctoral fellow at the Johannesburg Institute of Advanced Study.