Social Pan-Africanism: Expanding the #FeesMustFall Movement Across a Networked Africa

• In Event: Top Papers in Global Communication and Social Change

Abstract

With the proliferation of online social networks, communicative boundaries between Millennials in different regions of Africa have been blurred.  The emergence of online platforms lead to social Pan-Africanism which engages in the idea of a future where Africans are engaged in a more unified economic, social, and political self-determination. Utilizing the 2015 #FeesMustFall, South African tuition protests, which occurred both offline and through Twitter, this paper uses the protest as a case study to explore the structure of networked social movements and the extent to which they challenge transnational boundaries for social change. Furthermore, this paper argues that social networks offer a lens to examine relevance to transnational connective action, efforts for decolonization, and a reconfiguration of social movements in the age of the Internet.   

Authors

• Ignacio Cruz, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, U of Southern California

• Mehr Mumtaz, Pennsylvania State U