[Commlist] Call for Chapters: Edited Book on Social Media Censorship in Africa

*Call for Chapters: Edited Book on Social Media Censorship in Africa*

Editor: Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D., School of Communication and Media, 
Kennesaw State University, USA. Email: (fkperogi /at/ kennesaw.edu) 
<mailto:(fkperogi /at/ kennesaw.edu)>

*Introduction*

Africa used to be characterized as the abandoned child that vegetated on 
the desolate fringes of the information society. Emmanuel Castells 
(1998) even once characterized the continent as a constituent of the 
“black hole of informational capitalism.” However, the advent and 
democratization of the Internet and, with it, the evolution of social 
media have leapfrogged the continent to the global, internet-fueled 
network society. This fact has expanded and deepened Africa’s 
deliberative space, inspired digital activism, and enabled robust 
citizen participation in and engagement with governance. It has also 
animated social movements, actuated transnational connections, disrupted 
settled cultural certainties, and threatened the security and smug 
self-satisfaction of autocracies.

The centrality of social media in Africa is actuated by the enormous 
growth and explosion of mobile technology, particularly the rise of 
broadband technology, and the progressive lowering of the cost of access 
to the internet. Every projection for the future of Internet-ready 
mobile telephony in Africa points to the inexorable certainty of its 
continued growth and flowering and for the central role it will continue 
to play in powering Africa’s frenetic social media scene.

Nonetheless, amid the triumphalism that the expansion of the discursive 
space that social media has stirred is a potent threat from various 
African governments to constrict and constrain its luxuriance.From 
Tanzania requiring bloggers to pay $900 a year for the privilege to 
blog, to Uganda imposing a tax on citizens to use social media, to 
Cameroon’s periodic shutting down of the internet to stall the spread of 
digital rebellion against the government, to various African leaders 
deploying surveillance technology to spy on citizens critical of 
governments, to restrictive laws designed to asphyxiate dissent in such 
countries as Nigeria, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mali, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Sudan, 
and other countries, there is a war on Internet freedom on the 
continent. This fact has also activated pushback against governments and 
has centralized a tensile push and pull between citizens and governments 
in the African public sphere. For instance, apart from creating 
transnational publicity against social media censorship, activists and 
everyday citizens have also embraced subversive technologies such as 
virtual private networks, or VPN, to circumvent government censorship.

No systematic scholarly inquiry has investigated this emergent 
phenomenon. An edited volume that aggregates the research of scholars 
from across the continent on social media uses in different African 
countries and the legal and extra-legal efforts governments have 
invented to contain the vibrance of the social media scene on the 
continent would be a significant contribution to the literature on 
social media activism, digital rebellion, discursive democracy in 
transitional societies, and censorship on the Internet. I invite 
contributions from scholars of different disciplinary and methodological 
orientations on various dimensions of the unfolding phenomenon of social 
media censorship from all regions of Africa.

*Recommended topics:*

Below are suggested, but by no means exhaustive, themes contributors are 
encouraged to explore:

·Theoretical explorations of Internet censorship

·Social media and government censorship

·Case studies of anti-social media laws in African countries

·The rhetoric of “fake news” as a smokescreen to muzzle critical voices 
on social media

·Chinese influence in African governments’ clampdown on social media

·Spyware attacks on social media activists

·State cybersurveillance

·Israeli NSO Group Technologies and digital espionage

·Subversive technologies to circumvent social media censorship

·WhatsApp as one of Africa’s most consequential social media platforms

·Political dissidence on social media

·Transnational social media activism

·Bullying of voices of dissent on social media

·State-sponsored troll factories on social media

·The Panoptic gaze on social media

·Social media and radical social movement

*Target Audience*

I solicit contributions that will deepen, broaden, and extend the 
disciplinary conversations on the intersections of social media use and 
government censorship. This volume will be helpful to scholars in 
communication, sociology, political science, African studies, etc., 
media professionals and policy makers, and everyday citizens who are 
interested in the emerging tensile stress between social media activism 
and governmental restrictions across Africa.

*Timelines*

Interested contributors should send a 250- to 350-word abstract of their 
proposed chapters and their short bios by or before *May 1, 2020* to: 
(fkperogi /at/ kennesaw.edu) <mailto:(fkperogi /at/ kennesaw.edu)>

Notification of acceptance or rejection: *June 1, 2020*

Submission of full chapters: *September 30, 2020*

Peer-review of contributions returned to authors: *November 30, 2020*

Revised contributions submission: *January 5, 2021*

The book is expected to be released in 2021

*Publisher:*

Routledge, a well-regarded British academic publisher, has accepted my 
proposal for the volume.

**


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