Is WhatsApp shaping democracy in Africa?

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The growing centrality of the digital messaging platform WhatsApp to everyday life and elections in Africa has led to a frenzy of media coverage. Much of this has focused on WhatsApp as a potential channel for what is usually referred to as fake news.

that empowers citizens to hold governments accountable. Instead, WhatsApp is best understood as a disruptive technology that challenges existing hierarchies in ways that are simultaneously emancipatory and destructive, strengthening and undermining democracy at the same time.One of the most interesting things to come out of our interviews was that the organic power of WhatsApp is often overstated. According to party leaders and candidates, using WhatsApp effectively is hard work.

While recognising that WhatsApp is often used to spread stories designed to discredit them, opposition leaders were quick to point out how this medium shifted the balance of political communication in their favour. One contender for a local council seat in Oyo State in southwest Nigeria compared the situation with WhatsApp favourably to a former era in which the government monopolised the airwaves.

 

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