The role of social media in spreading political misinformation has received considerable attention. But various forms of social media also facilitate and enable participatory democracy across boundaries. They help to hold leaders to account as well as provide channels for airing the needs and demands of marginalised communities and vulnerable groups. These demands can sometimes even be propelled to the centre of public debates. While there has been considerable focus on Twitter and Facebook, the private messaging application WhatsApp has emerged as a especially popular medium for inter-personal communication. But WhatsApp has not received the attention it deserves. What is so special about WhatsApp and how and why has it emerged as the main form of communication for a wide range of actors on the African continent? 

Jamie Hitchen is an independent research analyst and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham. He has written extensively on social media in West Africa and recently co-edited a volume with Idayat Hassan entitled WhatsApp and Everyday Life in West Africa: Beyond Fake News. 

Twitter: @jchitchen

Resources

• Social Media Disruption: Nigeria’s WhatsApp Politics, Journal of Democracy (2020)
• If blackouts don’t work, what might? Tackling fake news in West Africa, African Arguments (2022)

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