Democracy and Use of Social Media by Public Sector Organisations in Africa

Democracy and Use of Social Media by Public Sector Organisations in Africa

Robert Ebo Hinson,

The adoption and use of social media is influenced in part by the prevailing political environment. The use of social media in Africa is fraught with some challenges due to the lack of political will, and sometimes opposition from some government institutions. The chapter provides the reasons why social media is viewed as anti-democratic within the African socioeconomic context. Some of the toxic factors have been found to include the promotion of misinformation, fake news, hate speech, and voter manipulation. The chapter also provides some examples of social media ban in Africa supervised by governments that perceive the technology as destructive. This chapter as well advocates for the promotion of social media because of its democracy-deepening function and concludes that social media must be promoted to develop democracy on the African continent

Springer Nature Switzerland AG

2023

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-22642-7_5

English