A generation and its weapon: Mass movement and the digital media

Book title: Digital Youth and Social Movements
Author: Nwachukwu Egbunike
Reviewer: Oko Owoicho

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Digital Youth and Social Movements: Perspective from Nigeria is caught within academic writing and mainstream discourse. In Nigeria, there is this demarcation that those in the academic world only speak to themselves — their writings are repetitive, sluggish, and more often than not, a rehashed jamboree of ideas. The mainstream discourse, however, yields itself to everybody and aims for linguistic freshness, no matter the subject it discusses. Of course, the first channel of difference between the academic and mainstream is that one follows a strict academic writing formula, while the other is open to exploration and freedom. It is this latter definition that I base my categorisation of Nwachukwu Egbunike’s book on. Although it is an academic project, the fluidity of language and audacity to discuss issues in a way that shows his objectivity, without missing the historical truth that permeates the Nigerian socio-political space, is the first success of this book.

The book is a historicisation of the rise and development of the social media movement in Nigeria; a trajectory that has altered the idea of protests as we know it. The book is divided into five parts: “Social Movements and Digital Media”, “#OccupyNigeria Protests”, “#EndSARS Protests”, “#Obidient Movement”, and “Digital Youth and Paradigm Shift in Nigerian Movements.” The first part offers a history of the “paradoxical power relationship between social movements and the mass media.” While social movement and mass media both have claims to democracy and human freedom, the politics of mass media leans towards the establishment, “due to the media’s bias for juicy headline news, which is in constant supply from the political class.” There is a neglect of the message of protesters and activists in most cases. Egbunike makes us understand that the media will always aim for what sells, and “Besides, the mass media stand in the middle of the power triad: media, politicians and movements.”

With the emergence of social media, there is a change hinged on the fact that “social movements sought alternative media. This might explain the euphoria that the digital media created for movements. Since movements find it difficult to get into the news, then they make use of medium that is democratic and lacks gate-keepers.” What is more interesting, for me, as a Nigerian reader, is that after the conceptualisation of what limits and fosters both traditional media and digital, the author offers a brief history of social movement in Nigeria; moving from the confrontation with the colonialists to post-independence struggles against military dictators, until the more recent struggles by Nigerian youth to reclaim the soul of their country.

Parts two, three, and four offer insight into the different movements in recent Nigerian history, from the 2012 #OccupyNigeria protests against the government of Goodluck Jonathan over fuel subsidy removal. Egbunike notes that the “Nigerian protest took its name from the 2011 Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests, in New York City’s Wall Street financial district… [and] by the 2011 Arab Spring revolution…” From here he moves to offer perspective on what differentiates the Nigerian protest from the ones above. His analysis proffers a proper cultural specificity that defines the Nigerian political terrain and the different factors motivating those differences. The part goes on to show, in tabular form — as if to certify the academic status of the book — how the Occupy Nigeria protest was framed in newspapers and on social media.

The beauty of Digital Youth and Social Movement is that the author does not only offer numbers and tables, he asserts his voice in the vision and hope of the people, and how the new media promotes that aspiration. Although he is analysing data gathered from research, he tells us:

The samples above from new media reveal a basic commonality inherent in all calls to arms — the division between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ The division between the oppressed and the oppressor might explain why the stress on ethnic/religious unity frames in fighting a government which had inflicted undue suffering on Nigerians resonated across new media platforms.

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In essence, the call to arms is on the community that the new media creates. It is easy to find frames of commonality by a group that shares the same aspiration of being oppressed, and this is not a community voice that mass media could have provided.

While Egbunike praises the impact of the digital media and its power to create a voice not caged by the gate-keepers, he shows his objectivity when he notes that there is also the crisis of digital utopianism on movements “with the supremacy of ‘I’ over the ‘we.’ In other words, it looks like many new media users competed to show that “my crowd is bigger than yours.” Hence, while we celebrate the emergence of digital media and what it has achieved in giving voice to a new generation, it is crucial to look at Egbunike’s data, which “show that the new media had higher percentages in foreign influence, generational transfer and ethnic/religious unity. This means the new media tended towards digital utopianism while the old media exhibited digital cynicism”. This is better understood when one understands his simple breakdown of digital utopianism — an ideology which holds that technological advancement will necessitate democratic praxis and overthrow totalitarianism. Digital cynicism, on the other hand, believes that technology is only a tool in the users’ hands.

Perhaps it is the #EndSARS protest and its metamorphosing into the Obidient movement that shows Egbunike’s depth of socio-political analysis. He clearly shows how one is the extension of the other and the role digital media plays in this development. More so, his evaluation of “The Hoodlums’ Rhetoric” shows that we need to study Digital Youth and Social Movements not solely as a subject of media studies. This part shows the author’s understanding of the politics happening in the country, and I will encourage Nigerians, especially the youth, to read this book. It is a testament to their strength and an evaluation of the cultural-cum-political modification happening in our lives due to technology. This confirms my earlier assertion that the book is academically structured, but it does not yield to the ‘academese’ lethargy that permeates most of Nigerian academic research.

Oko Owoicho is a critic and award-winning poet. He is the founder of Benue Poetry Troupe and Team Lead for Afrika-Writes.