Social Media And Youth Activism From A Global Perspective

On the 29th of September, 2021, The Youth Café was invited to give a lecture to the honors students at the University of Illinois at Chicago about a Global Perspective on Social Media Activism. We were truly humbled to have been given this opportunity to discuss global Social Media Activism and highlight some case studies in Africa, where we spoke about the role of the youth in social media activism and the role of social media in shaping the contemporary public sphere and our democracy.

Two representatives from The Youth Café, Executive Director, Willice Onyango and Communications lead, Malika Pyarali gave the presentation. They started by providing a brief introduction to The Youth Café and the work we do, specifically under the theme of Governance and Political Inclusion.

They highlighted the outcomes we expect from our projects under this theme, which are fivefold; 1) Enable the environment for active participation and meaningful engagement of the young people and encourage the exercising of their civic rights and responsibilities in the society to ensure transparency and accountability, 2) Increase partnership with young people as leaders and experts at all stages of policymaking, including the follow-up and review of policy implementation to ensure accountability 3) Increase investments in youth-led initiatives and programs that are working to promote and ensure a more accountable, responsive, and inclusive governance at local, national, and regional levels 4) Increase development of skills to be used in governance enabling activities thereby fostering enabling, sustainable, and inclusive development and growth 5) Enhance further collaboration among stakeholders (local, international, private sector and civil societies) to push for more accountability initiatives to be developed.

They then went on to explain the role of social media in activism across the African continent using case studies, noting that the advancement of digital media and its influence on social, political and economic issues facing the majority of African countries has steadily been on the rise.

There is no boundary for the digital revolution and we are witnessing an increase in digital activism as young citizens are eager to empower themselves politically and socially, by embracing computers, smartphones, and other web-based technologies.

Against the backdrop of the digital era, the role of social media and its influence on social mobilisations, political and economic issues is an evolving discourse. The opportunities and challenges presented by social media to African youth should best be understood from an African perspective. In order to best understand digital activism in Africa, one should first contextualize the diverse framework that underpins the continents cultural, economic, geopolitical and historical backgrounds.

The case studies used were #YouthManifestoKE #EndSARS #BringBackOurGirls #FeeMustFall and finally #SudanRevolution. These case studies provide important insight into Digital Media Activism from an African lens.

#YouthManifestoKE

The Kenya Youth Manifesto was an initiative that brought over 21,500 young people, youth leaders, and invited guests, a product of an elaborate deliberative process involving young people between the ages of 18 and 35 (a cohort that represents 57% of the electorate).

Through this process, The Youth Café led the efforts to author the first non-partisan Youth Manifesto. The audiences for the consultations represented the full diversity of youth. Ideas, opinions, and viewpoints of the nation's youth were sourced through consultations with youth groups, expert-led and youth-moderated Twitter chat sessions, and short mobile-based messages.

The online engagement was a particular focus of the initiative with proposals and ideas sourced through various partner social media platforms mainly in the form of written submissions. Twitter chats were held every Wednesday at 6.00 pm with the #YouthMakifestoKE during the month leading up to the publication.

Reaching over 3 million people. The chats brought in key experts to speak and respond to questions on pre-selected topics including the relevance of the East African Community Youth Policy to Kenyan youth, the nexus between young people and economy, the wellbeing of youth and youth and society.

The Youth Manifesto has helped to overcome historical patterns of communal violence and marginalization as it is reflective of the wants, needs, and desires of all young Kenyans. The open interaction fed into the general democratic scene and stimulated proposals of transformative solutions, marking a departure from past elections.

Some of its provisions, like a call for free universal secondary schooling and the increased allocations of funds for youth enterprises, were adopted by the current government. The Kenyan president Mr. Kenyatta publicly expressed his support of The Youth Manifesto.

#EndSARS

The #EndSARS campaign has drawn worldwide attention to Nigeria. With support from both international corporations and celebrities, it became a movement to attract solidarity on a global scale – especially after security forces opened fire on unarmed protesters in Lekki, Lagos on 20 October 2020 reportedly killing 12 people.

The Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) in Nigeria over the years have been known to use torture to extract information from suspects as well as carry out human rights violations, illegal arrests and detention and sexual harassment of women. On 4 October 2020, a video went viral showing SARS officers dragging two men from a hotel and shooting one of them outside.

This video caused an uproar in Nigeria and activists, young men and women in the country took to the street in peaceful protest to spread awareness of the violations committed by the police force and also calling for its disbandment. These protests spread across the country later on moved to social media with the hashtag #EndSARS.

On 9 October 2020, the #EndSARS hashtag trended globally on social media. A report analysis showed that the online protest was responsible for 48 million mentions and Tweets from 5 million unique authors on Twitter between 5 October and 14 October 2020

The hashtag changed from #EndSARS to #SARSMustEnd! With the announcement of a new unit, Special Weapons and Tactics Team (SWAT), by the Nigerian Police to replace SARS, the hashtag for the protests quickly changed to #EndSWAT on Twitter which also trended.

Although the protest was cut short on 20 October 2020 due to the Lekki Toll Gate Shooting, it lasted that long due to the internet. Mobilization of protesters, communication, and real-time updates took place via social media.

The #EndSARS protests forced Nigerian authorities to disband the Special Anti-Robbery Squad – SARS. Since the unit was dissolved, the hashtag – generating nearly 30 million tweets in the first 48 hours – was still trending in major cities across the world.

#BringBackOurGirls

On the evening of April 14, 2014, a band of gunmen stormed into a girls boarding school in the northeast Nigerian town of Chibok and carried away more than 200 students who had been preparing for their graduation exams. The young women were taken to the remote forest hideout of Boko Haram.

For weeks, almost no one seemed to notice the students were missing. Then the news went viral on Twitter, prompting some of the world’s most recognizable people—Pope Francis, Kim Kardashian, The Rock, Michelle Obama —to fire off a hashtag that lighted up billions of phones: #BringBackOurGirls.

Vigils and protests were held around the world to mark 100 days since the kidnapping. Participating countries included Nigeria, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Togo, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and Portugal.

The hashtag #BringBackOurGirls was tweeted 3.3 million times. Former First Lady Michelle Obama’s tweet of the hashtag was retweeted 57,000 times within a few days. The #BringBackOurGirls became one of the most viral phenomena known in the cyber world.

The world saw the convergence of online rage and the offline rallies in Nigeria. People realised the girls could be their own daughters, nieces, sisters, or even neighbours. The world connected and responded.

Social media played a pivotal role in ensuring that the Federal Government of Nigeria, which had hitherto denied the abduction, paid attention to the rescue of the girls and the general security of its citizens. The Paris Summit for security in Nigeria was held as a result, and actions for multilateral collaboration were agreed upon.

The #BringBackOurGirls campaign also triggered international response, with former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper acknowledging that Canadians had joined the international effort to free the schoolgirls, China offering to share intelligence services and satellites to gain any useful information, former French president Francois Hollande also offered to hold a summit in Paris with Nigeria and its neighbours to tackle the issue. United Kingdom and United States agreed to send experts to Nigeria to assist in the search for the students the team consists of military and law enforcement officers, specializing in "intelligence, investigations, hostage negotiation, information-sharing and victim assistance"

#FeeMustFall

The #FeeMustFall movement was a student-led protest that started in october 2015 as a result of an increase in fees at the University of Witwatersrand by 10.5%. Messages and news of the protests started spreading across South Africa and soon other universities such as the University of Cape Town and Rhodes joined in the protests.

At the beginning of the protests the main agenda was mainly the increase of fees however in the background other factors influenced it such as the lack of funding of poor students, the decline in government funding for universities and colleges, social and racial inequalities.

On October 25th Jacob Zuma met with Vice Chancellors and student representatives in Pretoria to discuss the way forward. In the afternoon the president announced that there will be no increase in fees for the year 2016. The protests also resulted in the guarantee by the government that they will form a bursary for poor students. This marked a major milestone for the protests.

#SudanRevolution

In 2018 the citizens of Sudan were tired of the rising cost of living and this caused a wave of antigovernmental demonstrations all over the country for the removal of President Omar Al-Bashir. On 11th April the Sudanese Military removed Omar Al-Bashir from his position in government and dissolved the cabinet.

Demonstrations that had started randomly grew into a national uprising of millions of people coordinating themselves and taking to the streets. The Coalition of Freedom and Change, a collective of different organizations was the main driver of the movement.

They formed neighborhood committees, organized mass strikes and drafted protest schedule that were disseminated through social media to galvanise citizens under the hashtag #SudanUprising

Thank you note from Ralph Keen, Dean of Honors College University of Illinois Chicago

The presentation triggered a discussion between the students who actively voiced their opinions and posed interesting questions such as: “Why does it take a celebrity to tweet about an issue for the world to care?” and “Why is there a lack of awareness about African issues and campaigns in the western world?”

“Thank you so much for your wonderful and very informative presentation. My students were all very grateful for this meeting and we had a lively conversation afterward. We spoke about inequality and privilege (why we need American celebrities to endorse campaigns as important), the role of politicians and international organizations (is it mostly good or mostly bad), why media in the United States offer such poor coverage of world events, what can we do as individuals to be authentic activists and not just bandwagon on issues that are molded for the Western gaze. I hope one day in the future we could organize such conversation and as Malika said, having these types of exchanges as well as supporting local and grassroots organization is the key to a more balanced and equal social activism and MIL.”

— Anna Kozlowska | Assistant Professor, The University of Illinois at Chicago

With social media activism growing exponentially the way it is, now more than ever there is a need to enhance the fact checking skills of the youth in Africa to restore eroded trust by fake news, improve their civic online reasoning and encourage responsible social media usage among the youth in particular.

That is why The Youth Café is seeking to equip young people with key media literacy skills such as critical thinking, fact checking, online safety, social media verification and quality assessment of online information that will enable them to use social media as a channel for activism wisely and in a safe manner. We are doing this through our Digital Media and Information Literacy Handbook. This handbook has benefited from the technical review support of University of Illinois and The Youth Café is excited for future collaborations with members of the University of Illinois community.

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