With the growing digital connectivity enabled by social media, socio-political movements and civil society formations perform their activism online. This phenomenon has received and continues to receive attention from scholars who seek to make sense of how social media provides a communication opportunity for the subalterns facing a lack of access to mainstream media which is commercial in nature. This paper builds from a PhD study that sought to critically analyse the manner in which the South African online news media frame and portray socio-political movements. While the study found that the media uses negative frames and narratives in the way in which it reports about two movements; Abahlali baseMjondolo and Operation Dudula, this qualitative study with the use of in-depth interviews with members of the two movements further gives an account of how the movements use social media to form their own counter-publics. This study employs the theory of digital counter-public sphere. Literature demonstrates that new media or social media networks have transformed the ambitions and capacity for socio-political movements' communication. The benefits of that for the movements, as this study reveals, is that it empowers them to do their own political reportage beyond the frames used by the mainstream media and further create their identities and participation in the public sphere. The study contributes to the growing scholarship of how social media aid the subalterns to confront the hegemonic nature of commercial media, and ignites counter voices from the movements who seek to take part in Participatory democracy.

Authors:
Trevor Hlungwani, University of South Africa, South Africa

About the Presenter(s)
Trevor Hlungwani is currently lecturer at the University of South Africa. He teaches media studies, public relations and communication.

Connect on Linkedin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-makhanani-hlungwani-63655677/

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