Youth politics of engagement and resistance: agency on social media spaces in contexts of crisis

Abstract

While social media spaces have been explored, including the understanding of how political activism is enacted on social media and how those spaces have become spaces of political engagement and resistance, the question of the present and politically visible youth on social media remains critical in analysing youth as active political subjects. In this paper, we examine the ways in which authoritarian regimes have been challenged by tech-savvy millennials through social media spaces. We argue that social media spaces are not just spaces of entertainment but political and politicised spaces as well. The cyber activism of youth activists in Africa has made authoritarian regimes rethink political accountability and transparency in their governance systems. Similarly, social media has also compelled authoritarian regimes to respond to issues of political violence and police brutality, which have become commonplace in many African countries such as Zimbabwe. The paper utilises an ethnography of being in the social media space to examine the ways in which political engagement and resistance to authoritarian regimes on social media spaces manifest and are articulated. We assert that social media spaces have created political spaces in which citizens challenge the notion of despositif from below. Thus, regimes of power and knowledge are fluid and can be challenged from below, through social media spaces.