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Invisible 2.0 dot plenary
- 4. One person one tweet?
- 6. SA’s ‘massive rebellion of the poor’?
- 7. ‘Dissatisfied’ 2.9 unrest incidents/day SA police crowd control data on ‘service delivery’ protests in SA
- 8. ‘Who is telling these stories?
- 11. Who speaks? Who gets heard? These are very different questions.
- 12. 51% 27% 11% 11% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% print media broadcast media citizen media online-only news Type of publisher Print media journalists generated the defining images – protesters/mayhem vs police/order Who speaks?
- 13. 29 22 6 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 Mxit Facebook Twitter Platform by population %
- 14. Poorest pay most
- 16. Who gets heard?
- 17. Hardly anyone! <2 retweets or mentions Hardly anyone gets heard
- 18. Power law of online participation Reading m-novel Participation in tutoring
- 19. Ensuringgrassrootsparticipation • Can a network like DOT help to equalise participation? • Huge potential to extend and amplify ‘pavement radio’ • Extremely limited grassroots use of social media, esp Twitter • Even when people do have access, their contribution tends to disappear • Bridge the gaps between cheap messaging and mainstream media
Editor's Notes
- I don’t need to tell you how exciting it is that with the rise of social media in Africa we see the potential for young people’s voices to be heard, and for their issues to be placed on the national agenda, we all feel it. Today I’m going to ask you to look beyond the stories that we like to tell about the successes of social media and its cool'cool' factor and see what we’re really dealing with when we rely on these forms of media in our organisations and networks.
- Professor Francis Nyamnjoh from the University of Cape Town has explained why social media is so exciting to as in Africa because it builds on traditions of informal communication. It’s like older forms of ‘pavement radio’ used to obtain information, share it and create possibilities where normal channels are out of reach. Nyamnjoh, F. B. (2011). De-Westernizing media theory to make room for African experience. In H. Wasserman (Ed.), Popular Media, Democracy and Development in Africa. Routledge.
- So I believe we should all be aiming to turn social media into this kind of citizen media. That’s the promise of participatory 'citizen' journalism which could open new opportunities for democratic citizenship Nyamnjoh, F. B. (2011). De-Westernizing media theory to make room for African experience. In H. Wasserman (Ed.), Popular Media, Democracy and Development in Africa. Routledge.
- When we look at who actually gets heard on social media platforms, unfortunately the picture is not so democratic. Attention follows what we call a ‘power law’ which means that the rich just get richer.In a nutshell, some people never get heard, others are the ‘trending’ celebs who get insanely huge levels of attention and access to the microphone.
- SA's Massive rebellion of the poorLet’s move our focus to young people in South Africa, the country with the highest number of community protests in the world (Bond, 2010), mostly challenging delivery of basic state services such as electricity, water and housingDissatisfied
- Youth unemployment has soared by 20% since the economic crisis of 2008. when we see our school results, we know that it’s the schooling system has failed, not the kids. This is a map of all the protests since 2009, and in that time police have dealt with 2.9 "unrest incidents" each day . Who is telling the stories of the protests?
- We can’t really rely on traditional media to tell the stories of the protests, and particularly to give us the voices of the protesters. You’re probably wondering whether social media is helping to convey the protestors’ stories to a broader audience? I’ll give you an example of what I’m talking about, back in my home town.
- I’m going to take you on a visit to my home town of Sasolburg in the Free State province. Sasolburg is a town full of wealthy chemical industries In the township of Zamdela, the average income is now R400 per month. I take home about 55 times that much, but if I had been born on the other side of the tracks, that protester (or his mother) would’ve probably been me.
- In January, Sasolburg residents embarked on a protest against decisions by their local govement and things turned really ugly. Our television screens were full of burning cars, people looting and four people were killed by police.Sadly in a country where people’s rights are routinely just ignored they have found that this kind of violence is a way to get attention really fast
- So in understanding how these events played out on social media, we need to look at two very different but equally important questions The first is, who speaks?And the second is, who gets heard?
- So let’s first look at the question, who speaks? I took a random sample of tweets from the time of the Zamdela protests and analysed the images they linked to. I found that mainstream media is still dominant in defining which images we see on Twitter. Citizen media mostly from the white right wing accounted for only about 11% of the tweets
- If you’re wondering why the Zamdela protesters weren’t telling their stories on Twitter, this graph should tell you why. These are 2011 figures, showing how Twitter compares to Facebook and MXit. But Twitter is definitely a playground for wealthier middle class minorities, not for people earning only R400 per month.A lot of activism does happen in the tiny spaces of the Mxit ecosystem. In another study (not Sasolburg) I spoke to two COSAS activists from small town in Limpopo province. They used Mxit to run their debates. They had Facebook but preferred MXit as a way to reach members. I also have some Facebook data but haven’t analysed it yet.
- Poorest pay mostSecond, most South Africans use feature phones like this one. Although they can access Facebook and Twitter, many still prefer cheap instant messaging. Lots of grassroots participation takes place on Mxit unfortunately it’s invisible to mainstream media. That’s why we didn’t see any links from Twitter to MXit.
- First, I probably don’t need to tell you that expensive airtime and unsubsidised phones means that the poorest cellphone users on prepaid subscriptions pay the most and have very intermittent access “The week goes by without airtime” This means they’re likely to restrict their use of social media.
- Poorest pay mostSecond, most South Africans use feature phones like this one. Although they can access Facebook and Twitter, many still prefer cheap instant messaging. Lots of grassroots participation takes place on Mxit unfortunately it’s invisible to mainstream media. That’s why we didn’t see any links from Twitter to MXit.
- Hardly anyone gets heardIt’s time to go back to Twitter and look at our second question, who gets heard on Twitter? It’s hard to tell what people are actually paying attention to on social media. We can see what sources they retweet and mention in their tweets to other people. Judging from this, the mainstream media were highly influential, while citizen media didn’t’ make much impact, apart from tweets by the white right wing.The vast majority of users had very little influence on others discussing the topic of the Zamdela protest. They were neither retweeted nor mentioned by others using the keyword. A small number of high influence accounts receive the lion’s share of the retweets and mentions.
- This participation graph can teach some important lessons about online education and organisation. In fact, we see this graph which shows most people barely participating whenever we look at all kinds of online participation. The majority only use the resource once or twice while a small number of people benefit a great deal from the resource. Ask yourself – who are you on the graph? And who are the celebs?
- In conclusion, I would challenge you to decide how a network like DOT can help to equalise public participation. We can see the huge potential of social media to extend and amplify ‘pavement radio’ , but there is still extremely limited grassroots use, especially of Twitter. People who do have access can disappear, unless they can bridge the gaps between cheap messaging and mainstream media.