Zimbabwe and Mexico netizens: a transnational comparative analysis of digital political activism and social justice.

Abstract

The article adopts a transnational perspective to explore trends in Mexico and Zimbabwe's digital activism, social movement, and scholarship. The concept of digital activism as applied to the context of this article is connected with the idea of struggle and physical and mental suffering. The article compares Hopewell Chin’ono and the Zapatists' cases to the role played by digital technology in creating global collective identity and activist practices. These comparative cases are used to discuss the political significance of digital activism and how it manifested to create a subscription to apolitical and democratic practice aimed at raising consciousness towards political events. The article makes comparisons focusing on network-supported movements such as Twitter, ‘hashtag movements’ and the ambivalence of netizens to understand discursive practices of digital political activism and social justice. Whereas the Zimbabwe and Mexican governments utilise social media as a political weapon to undermine democracy, netizens use digital space to address the democratic deficiency bedevilling them. As such, the article also examined how digital activism translated into protest action on the streets. The article utilised secondary data sources. The researcher reviewed social media platforms and many online narratives. Comparative discourse analysis was undertaken from different cases in Zimbabwe and Mexico. The article analysed cases from a Zimbabwean netizen, namely Hopewell Chin’ono. It also zoomed into Mexico’s citizen-launched website, namely the Zapatist Solidarity Network. Theoretical insights are drawn from Gramscian theory of hegemony, in particular, ideological principles of “war of manoeuvre” and “war of position”. The main argument herein is that in Latin America and Southern Africa, social media is an activism space for social movements and digital activists to disseminate counter-hegemonic narratives that can be translated into active political participation. The article concludes that netizens in Zimbabwe and Mexico use the internet to create social movements and groups that are independent of the nation-state and can influence the law-making process.