Instead of evaluating the potential of Twitter as a facilitator of offine revolutionary activities, its conceptualization as a cultural platform may shed a different under standing of its functionality. Reference here is being made to the understanding of culture as a central aspect of any revolutionary project (Gramsci, 1994). Accord ing to Gramsci, the central aspect of this culture is a critique which helps one to understand their identity. As interpreted by Crehan (2002), this culture basically refers to how classes are lived which determines how people live and see their world, which subsequently affects their ability to imagine how that world can be changed. If Twitter can be viewed as a possible shaper of this human imagination, its potential to facilitate revolutions could be seen differently as a long-term project (Shirky, 2011).
As an activist, Gramsci, according to Crehan (2002), was concerned with how cultural shifts could be facilitated as well as how reactionary forces could be over come. Key to this Gramscian thinking was his defnition of culture as an act of connecting causes and effects which would shape how people live and imagine their lives, which would either promote or hamper realization of an equitable and just society. Gramsci further defned the act of connecting causes and effects as thinking well and also emphasized that this culture must be organized. One ele ment to this organization was solidarity (Gramsci, 1977) which he explained as involving the work of persuasion, clarifcation, and mutual education. Thus, it is this chapter’s argument that instead of asking how Twitter could facilitate offine protests, perhaps the right question to ask is how it can foster progressive cultural shifts within Zimbabwe, by allowing people to discuss and investigate problems, and forge solidarity networks while acknowledging the role of both (public) in tellectuals and the masses. The mere fact that Zimbabweans can gain a platform from where they can air their views is an important cultural shift in a country that has been characterized by censorship, surveillance, and general suppression of freedom of expression.
Another important question to ask in relation to Twitter would be how it can help people understand their place in the world in which they live (Crehan, 2002). Crehan interprets this to mean culture as ‘thought in action.’ Gramsci (1994) conceptualized culture as organization, discipline, and attainment of higher awareness. As such, it is arguably important to ask if Twitter can facilitate these elements. In fact, Gramsci argued that attainment of higher awareness is gaining consciousness of one’s value which happens in degrees. From this perspective, it can be argued that looking at Twitter as a platform that should immediately facilitate offine protests to topple authoritarian regimes might be overstating its potential. This consciousness, ac cording to Gramsci (1994), facilitates or enables people to overthrow the patterns of organization imposed on them by the dominant groups.
What connects all pieces together is how consciousness is gained through intelligent refection (Gramsci, 1977), which arguably is facilitated by the act of connecting causes and effects as well as investigating problems (Crehan, 2002). Gramsci (1977) argued that every revolution is preceded by this intense labor or criticism which allows the protesters to gain their consciousness, realize their responsibility and value. While the forms of criticism found on Twitter may not match those advocated for by Gramsci, when Twitter or social media voices are conceptualized from Couldry’s (2010) understanding of voice as involving defending all voices, it can be argued that all voices have value. It is this realization that gives human kind the strength to fght for freedom from their oppressors. The intellectual labor involves challenging the dominant group’s intellectuals who perpetuate oppression of the subaltern groups through social hegemony and political governance as part of the state’s apparatuses. It is in this process that rising groups formulate their own intellectuals (Gramsci, 1992). Crehan (2002) interprets culture in the sense of gaining consciousness as self-knowledge focused on understanding one’s rights in relation to others. This is also related to the concept that cultures ‘are groupings with similar thinking and acting.’ This raises the question of whether Twitter can bring together these cultural groupings. These groupings, according to Gramsci, should make a conscious working out of their own culture instead of the one they are born into, and the question here again is if Twitter can be able to facilitate that.
To create this culture, Gramsci argued that it means diffusion of truths and making them a basis of action (Crehan, 2002). Gramsci further argued that this diffusion of truths should lead people to think coherently, which he termed the most important philosophical event which involves knowing others’ history (Gramsci, 1994). Once again, this raises the question of whether Twitter can be able to facilitate realization of this ‘philosophical event’ – a moment when the people can be led to think about the present world clearly and in a coherent fashion. Crehan (2002) termed this ‘philosophical event’ the most important perhaps because it enables the masses to counter hegemony of the dominant classes.
The above Gramscian arguments have also been highlighted in debates on Twitter’s potential in facilitating social change. Just as Gramsci argued that a revolution is preceded by intense intellectual labor, social media optimists argue that protests come at the end of a long process that involves a fundamental battle in people’s minds to change their thinking and perception (Castells, 2007; Shirky, 2011). Social media helps in this regard by frst developing a public sphere (Shirky, 2011; Tufekci, 2017) where ordinary people can take part in the social production of meaning (Castells, 2007). Castells calls this power making by mind-framing, a strategy he argues makes repression unsustainable since body torturing is not as effective as mind shaping. These social media optimists recognize that a revolution is a long process that takes time and suffering which gives room for the use of Twitter as a tool for intellectual refection. Empirical fndings on the effectiveness of social media in facilitating social change have produced contradictory fndings. Gerbaudo (2012), for instance, argues that a hashtag did not start the Occupy Wall Street protest as social media were only used partially. Others have also moved in to set the record straight by proving how social media, particularly Twitter did not play a role in the Iranian Green Revolution (Esfandiari, 2010; Lynch, 2011). Esfandiari (2010) argues that word of mouth was much more effective in the Iranian Green Revolution. The same contradictions have also been found in Zimbabwe and this chapter argues that there is need to move beyond these.
The binary approach discussed above has also been highlighted in Africa in general. In Zimbabwe, Chiweshe (2013) has argued that Facebook is an anti-democratic platform. According to him, Zimbabwean youths spend most of their time discussing fashion, sports, sex, gossiping instead of engaging in serious political debates. Mutsvairo and Sirks (2015) came to the same conclusion after studying one Facebook page called ‘Baba Jukwa’ which aimed to expose the government’s wrongdoing. They concluded that the page failed to encourage democratic participation in Zimbabwe due to a number of weaknesses that include anonymity, lack of privacy, unreliability, slacktivism etc. Chiumbu (2015) also notes how social media lacks radical democratic principles as well as how it is characterized by exclusion and silencing of certain members of the society. Other challenges include indirect infuence by the regime through the spread of fears, lack of leadership, a shared ethos to guide discussions, sustaining consistent debates (Karekwaivanane & Mare, 2019).
However, there are also many studies that have shown the power of social media as protest tools alongside others that have shown the complexity of social media use which varies from one country to the other (Mare, 2014). In this regard, social media has presented opportunities that at times have been successfully capitalized on depending on each country’s context. In repressive places like Zimbabwe, digital platforms have become some of the few options for activists to express themselves (Chitanana, 2020) which has made activism in the country easier (Mutsvairo, 2016). While digital platforms have not resulted in drastic changes like regime change in Zimbabwe, they have created counter hegemonic spaces to challenge the state as well as lead to structural changes in movements as they can now easily mobilize new members (Chitanana, 2020; Mare, 2020; Moyo, 2011). In some instances, despite political repression in Zimbabwe, social media activism has also managed to translate from online spaces onto the streets and vice versa, which is a huge development in such a repressive country (Gukurume, 2017; Mare, 2016). This later argument shows the transformation of Gramscian intellectual labor into a distributed voice in the networked era (Couldry, 2010). This distributed voice is much more widespread as it affords whoever has access to the internet to participate. In Couldry’s words, this is the grounded nature of voice. In other words, social media has to a certain extent liberated intellectual labor by making it socially grounded. It is, thus, this chapter’s argument that social media offers an opportunity to reconsider the meaning of organic intellectuals and how they engage in intellectual labor in the modern era. This is evidenced by how in Zimbabwe, from a Gramscian perspective, social media has allowed ordinary people to challenge dominant hegemonic narratives (Karekwaivanane & Mare, 2019) making social media sites of manufacturing resistance (Mare, 2020). In general, social media has expanded the arenas for political contestation, giving Zimbabweans a voice to challenge the state’s hegemony (Karekwaivanane & Mare, 2019; Mare, 2020). At the same time, the some of the limitations against this counter-hegemonic power of social media include its appropriation by the establishment to defend its hegemony (Moyo, 2011). While these studies have considered the strength and weaknesses of social media as a protest platform from a structural and systemic perspective, lit tle attention has been paid to the strength and weakness of social media protest by considering how the messages are crafted. Thus, this chapter moves beyond these previous studies that have considered social media use in Zimbabwe from a macro perspective by examining it from a micro perspective.
Couldry’s (2010) argument that voice is a social phenomenon has to be valued for its own sake. It does not have to be valued on the basis of whether it has achieved a higher order result of not. That will be tantamount to oppression. Mare (2014) echoes this by arguing that researchers should not be obsessed with demonstration effect but instead look at political, economic, and social demands. This is because social media use varies at every stage from one country to the other, depending on context. It is this line of research, from Zimbabwe’s #ThisFlagMovement that the chapter seeks to advance by critically examining how, in specifc terms, does Twit ter facilitate cultural refection which is essential in the masses gaining conscious ness to challenge dominant hegemony under repressive conditions.
Central to Gramsci’s conceptualization of culture is the concept of power and how it keeps the subordinated groups under perpetual conditions of suppression. To understand this dynamic, Gramsci (1992) uses the concept of hegemony, which he uses to analyze the relations of power between the dominant groups and the subordinated ones. One problem noticed by Gramsci, according to Crehan (2002), is that the subordinated groups have an impoverished and unsystematic conscious ness due to their powerlessness in the power structure. In order for the masses to be able to realize their strength, according to Gramsci (1977), they need to develop necessary consciousness which will enable them to gain self-awareness and real ize the "identity and class limits of their enemy" so they can avoid generic hatred (Crehan, 2002). This is a very important concept in relation to Twitter protests. As this chapter argues, the big question is, does Twitter enable people to gain this necessary consciousness as articulated by Gramsci.
This is because for Gramsci, the powerful manage to remain in power by keeping the subaltern groups’ potential energy in check hence ensuring that the powerless will always give consent to their own domination (Crehan, 2002). Other key characteristics that disempower the masses and ensures that they continue to live under conditions of inequality, according to Crehan (ibid) is that they fail to produce coherent accounts of the world. This is on top of their limited view of the world which further weakens their ability to produce effective political move ments. However, this chapter argues that Twitter gives digitally connected masses an opportunity to construct their own coherent accounts of the world. The chapter further articulates how these masses construct their accounts.
In order to understand whether Twitter helps Zimbabwean citizens to take charge of the narrative and understand their relations with those in power so as to gain appropriate consciousness, the chapter will be guided by the following re search questions:
How is the discourse around the #ZimbabweanLivesMatter hashtag counter hegemonic?
How are the ordinary people and elites represented as speakers around the #ZimbabweanLivesMatter?
What are the representational strategies and subsequent identities constructed for the ordinary people and elites?
How is action represented in cases involving human rights violations, corrup tion etc. and what are the associated ideological implications?