Beyond ‘networked individuals’: social-media and citizen-led accountability in political protests

Abstract The accessibility of social media and communication platforms such as WhatsApp in sub-Saharan Africa has expanded exponentially over the past decade. The benefits are that new communities of ‘networked individuals’ outside of the traditional geographic localities have emerged. The capacity of ordinary citizens to autonomously gather, process and publish information has taken away states’ monopoly over information, enabling citizens to form alternative narratives and influence the course of political discourse. Local conflicts and grievances have also been globalised, building a critical base for evidence-based advocacy. Yet not all communities have achieved these ideals, partly because citizens have remained ‘loosely connected individuals’ unable to transform their ‘networks’ into agents of change and reform. This article is aimed at exploring how this transformation can be achieved. Based on field research on social media activism and internet-based movements in Zimbabwe and Ethiopia, this article explores how social media as a tool for citizen-led accountability can be institutionalised and transformed from ‘networked individuals’ to change agents able to hold government to account.


Introduction
Countries in Africa are experiencing a deepened and protracted mobile internet penetration.In recent years, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe have had a 230% and 101% increase, respectively, in mobile broadband population penetration.By December 2020, according to Internet World Stats (2020), 17.9% of Ethiopians and 55.7% of Zimbabweans had mobile access to social media and communication sites like Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp -revolutionising the production, processing and dissemination of information.For these mobileinternet-connected people, their access to and networking on social media platforms is empowering.For authoritarian regimes, however, it poses an unusual threat to their political hegemony.On the other hand, for innovative anti-government activists, such internet penetration signals the break of state monopoly over information, enabling citizens to form alternative narratives and influence the course of political discourse.Even with stringent broadcasting limitations, YouTube and Facebook have made it possible for these activists to circumvent broadcasting restrictions, enabling them to produce and disseminate information beyond the tyranny of their countries' geographic borders, and effectively globalise local issues.
The outcomes of social media activism have not been similar across societies.While mass revolutions birthed on social media contributed to the fall of long-standing authoritarian regimes in Egypt and Tunisia, in sub-Saharan African countries such as Burundi, Cameroon and Zimbabwe social media activists have struggled to cross the abyss between cyberactivism and mass revolutions -raising concerns that these movements are 'networks of individuals' rather than collective agents of social and political change (Benski et al. 2013, 548;Treré 2015).Exploring the concept of 'networked individuals' , this article analyses how social media as a tool for citizen-led accountability can be institutionalised and help transform 'networked individuals' into a 'social group' of change agents that can hold governments to account.In making this contribution, the article goes beyond the utopian and dystopian views of social media and activism.It argues that social media, like any medium of information production, dissemination and mobilisation, is not a causal agent but a tool in the hands of activists, who depending on their skill can translate social media activism into a social movement able to effect the desired change in authoritarian regimes.In that respect, the article argues that the organisational structure of social media activism determines the sustainability, effectiveness and impact of the activism.
Empirically, this article focuses on Ethiopia and Zimbabwe.Researchers often use democracy and other indices to measure the democracy level of countries across the world.These ratings, however, are also widely disputed as they show how democracy is conceived by particular countries and thus reflect the powerful countries' ideologies.Mindful of these criticisms, in this study, we refer to these indices to understand the overall democratic performance of the selected countries.Ethiopia and Zimbabwe are categorised as being under authoritarian regimes by the Economic Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index, and by scholars such as Cheeseman (2020) and Raftopoulos (2020).Despite changes in political leadership, both states have maintained strict regulations on internet access and freedoms, thus limiting its use as a mobilising tool by social movements.Accordingly, Freedom House's Freedom on the Net Index considers Ethiopia to be 'not free' and Zimbabwe to be 'partly free' .The two countries have sought to restrict the publication of online content, and have violated user rights through repressive laws such as Zimbabwe's Public Order and Security Act and Ethiopia's Anti-Terrorism Proclamation, Telecom Fraud Offence Proclamation and Computer Crime Proclamation, among others.These laws regulate and restrict internet use and have, on several occasions, been invoked to interrupt and/or shut down the internet to curtail its use as a mobilisation tool by social movements and activists (Karekwaivanane and Msonza 2021; CIPESA 2020; Human Rights Watch 2020).In addition, both countries have strong ties with China, which has been instrumental in training officials from both countries in cyber intelligence and surveillance.Chinese companies such as Huawei have provided technology for surveillance and intelligence gathering aimed at restricting and confining the space for internet-based activism.Yet in Ethiopia, despite a lower internet penetration rate than Zimbabwe, social media has been instrumental in organising mass protests for greater political rights, which contributed to the resignation of Hailemariam Desalegn, the country's former prime minister.In Zimbabwe, in contrast, social media activism demanding economic and political reforms was unable to force the resignation of Robert Mugabe, who was later ousted by the military.This article provides a thorough analysis of #ThisFlag in Zimbabwe to show its limitations and why it failed to achieve its intended objectives.In doing so, it also draws insights from #OromoProtests in Ethiopia.
The #OromoProtests specifically targeted the Ethiopian federal government because of the marginalisation and exclusion of the Oromo people, particularly as a result of the expansion of Addis Ababa.The immediate cause for the protests was the expansion of the city into Oromia's territory.These were the immediate reasons that ignited the demonstrations and opposition gatherings (Craig 2016).The #OromoProtests hashtag was first used in a tweet posted by user @Novinha56 on 18 June 2013 in response to violence against Oromo refugees in Egypt.Since then, #OromoProtests 'has become a go-to online keyword used in modern protests and political engagement in Ethiopia and by members of Ethiopian diaspora communities' and other grassroots movements in Ethiopia (Code for Africa 2020, 9).Over the years, it has become a social media campaign symbolising the convergence of online and physical forms of activism, and has been used by parties such as the Oromo Peoples Democratic Organization (OPDO) (now known as the Oromo Democratic Party, OPD) to mobilise Ethiopians and the diaspora as well as to internationalise the Oromo protests (Larok 2019).In Zimbabwe, #ThisFlag originated from a video posted on Facebook by a Baptist Church pastor, Evan Mawarire, on 20 April 2016.As noted by Sacks (2020, 239), 'in the video, Mawarire reimagined the symbolism of the Zimbabwean national flag, which he wore around his shoulders, in order to criticize the state of the country … and to call for citizen action against Mugabe' .Tagging their posts with #ThisFlag, social media users shared their own experiences, and the hashtag 'offered a rhetoric of affiliation, connecting previous protesters against corruption, inflation and fuel prices' (Sacks 2020, 239).However, as noted by Mutsvairo and Sirks (2015), the online activism in Zimbabwe failed to transition into ground action.This article explores why #ThisFlag, unlike the #OromoProtests, failed to transition to physical activism.
Based on his examination of #ThisFlag and #RhodesMustFall, Sebeelo (2021) argues that hashtag activism increased resistance in Africa.However, in explaining the increase in hashtag activism, Sebeelo, unlike us, did not consider the effect of alliance formation and resource mobilisation on sustainability of the hashtag activism.Matsilele and Ruhanya (2021) attribute this lack of sustainability and effectiveness of the internet-based movements in Zimbabwe to their constant fluidity.Building on that, this article argues that the constant fluidity is, to a greater extent, a symptom of the lack of organisational structure within the internet-based movements.Due to a lack of organisational structure, social media activism increases in-group participation but diminishes outgroup engagement (Workneh 2021).In this article, we concur but advance this argument by arguing that more than being an end in itself, social media is a resource for mobilisation that is only as effective as the capacity of the activists to build synergies with other social movements that occupy physical space.
The majority of existing scholarship on social movements in Africa comprises either single case studies or research that focuses on social movements in one country.This article focuses on social media activism in relation to #ThisFlag, a social movement in Zimbabwe, and explains why it achieved different results to #OromoProtests in Ethiopia despite these countries being under similar political regimes.In that respect, this article does not provide a comparative analysis of the two hashtags but draws lessons from the #OromoProtests that could have helped #ThisFlag to transition into physical space.In discussing the two social media activism hashtags, we acknowledge the difficulties of attributing outcomes to a particular social movement because different political, social, economic, cultural and technological factors impact on the capacity of social movements to achieve their objectives.Furthermore, the impact of social movements may not be immediate; hence, our analysis focuses not only on the outcome but also on the social media activists' engagement with other social movements occupying physical space, and their use of social media as a resource.

Social media activism, social media campaigns and networked individuals
A social movement is a sustained collective action of groups with shared beliefs and a common purpose and includes contentious interaction with other actors (Tarraw 1995, 225).These social movements are based on sustained action exerting pressure on state actors to bring about change -namely, activism.In recent years, social media and communication sites have frequently been used by activists as platforms for contentious interaction.Therefore, in this article, we use social media activism, also referred to as hashtag activism or digital activism, broadly to refer to sustained action using campaigns on social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp.A social media campaign is therefore a systemised endeavour to promote a certain goal through the use of one or more social media platforms.
Social media groups, whatever their purpose, constitute a network of individuals mostly tied together by loose connections.The ease of subscribing to a channel on YouTube, or following a #hashtag or activist personality on Twitter and Facebook, means that hardly any calculated thought is necessary for the responsibilities and implications of such an action.In most cases, the cost of joining social media campaigns is just too low and emotive compared to joining a social movement organisation or a political party.The result is a collective of loosely connected individuals that Rainie and Wellman (2012) describe as 'networked individuals' .They argue that in incorporating gadgets into their lives, people have changed the ways they interact with each other.They have become increasingly networked as individuals, rather than embedded in groups.In the world of networked individuals, it is the person who is the focus: not the family, not the work unit, not the neighbourhood, and not the social group.(Rainie and Wellman 2012, 6) Two factors arise from Rainie and Wellman's description of the networked individual.First, the method of connection is not personal but is mediated through an impersonal gadget such as a mobile phone.The implication is that other members of the social media campaign remain 'accounts' and alien, especially in authoritarian regimes where people use aliases rather than their real names for fear of being identified.For personal security reasons, the individual remains focused on self while being suspicious of the other 'accounts' due to the pervasiveness of government infiltration and surveillance.Second, as noted by some scholars, movements and in particular high-risk activism require trust among participants, which they argue could be prompted by close relationships and not virtual interactions through social media (Diani 2000;Gladwell 2010).The implication is that because the other 'accounts' affiliated to the social media campaign are unknown to the individual even though they are 'networked' , there is usually no consensus and the trust required to take on highrisk activities beyond their keyboards is lacking.
The nature of 'networked individuals' is therefore such that they are a heterogeneous collective of individuals, holding a multiplicity of views on the same issue.Part of the reason, as in the case of #ThisFlag, a social media campaign initiated by Pastor Evan Mawarire in May 2016 (Gukurume 2017) and aimed at 'empowering and partnering with citizens of Zimbabwe to be engaged and active in the national issues that affect their livelihood' (ThisFlag 2020), is that there is an implicit and abstract consciousness of the problem that they face, which remains at an individual perspective rather than being seen from a collective perspective.For instance, what constitutes a 'national issue' to a middle-class lawyer is different from that of a vendor or a rural farmer.The individuals in such social media campaigns therefore remain loosely connected by the abstractness of their 'problem' and consequently lack the capacity to weave their individual frustrations together with others into a tapestry of collective anger and revolt against a common 'enemy' .
Further compounding the loose connection of the networked individuals is that there is no sorting and consolidation of their diverse and multiple voices, often collected through likes and comments on Facebook or replies and retweets on Twitter.Comments on Facebook pages of ThisFlag -IfulegiLeyi -MurezaUyu and Seyoum Teshome, a leading blogger and protest leader in Ethiopia, suggest that comments from their followers are usually disjointed and there is no effort to facilitate the reaching of a collective consensus by leaders of the campaigns.In concurrence, Mutsvairo and Sirks (2015, 331) argue that digital discussions, particularly in Zimbabwe, do not result in grounded action.Accordingly, even though there is an exchange of information and ideas, in actual effect, the 'revolt' remains in an individual's lived experience.The social media activism is therefore unable to break the barriers of individualism to reach realms of collective group action.Accordingly, without being centrally organised, the cause for the struggle remains abstract -and the efforts of the 'networked individuals' undirected towards a specific objective.This implies that social media activism fails to create the tipping point leading to the movement's success (Kidd and McIntosh 2016).
The implication for these isolated but 'networked individuals' is that in authoritarian regimes like Zimbabwe and Ethiopia, with highly sophisticated institutions of surveillance, monitoring and use of legislation to impede social media activism, they remain stuck 'in the closet' for fear of being identified (CIPESA 2020; Karekwaivanane and Msonza 2021).The governments of Zimbabwe and Ethiopia have expended huge resources in perfecting their cyber-surveillance capacity to prevent the use of social media as a mobilisation tool and to keep members of social media activism groups isolated and suspicious of each other.For instance, intelligence officers working on cybersecurity at the Ethiopian National Intelligence and Security Service in Addis Ababa have received training and surveillance equipment from China, enabling them to monitor what Ethiopians post online, block some messages, and track the activities of prominent anti-government activists (Polyakova and Meserole 2019, 4).The China connection was confirmed by Robert Mugabe, the former president of Zimbabwe, who in April 2016 said: 'Some people use the internet in a bad way … But the Chinese have put in place security measures and we will look at these so that we stop these abuses on the internet' (quoted in Phiri 2016).Apart from surveillance, the regimes in Zimbabwe and Ethiopia use legislation to impede social media activism.The Zimbabwe African National Union -Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) regime initiated the Data Protection Act (formerly known as the Computer Crime and Cyber Crime Bill) which empowers the police to search and confiscate electronic gadgets such as mobile phones, demand information from broadband service providers, intercept private communication, and prosecute even those in the diaspora for any use of social media that contravenes that law.Ethiopia, on the other hand, has used its Anti-Terrorism Proclamation (ATP) to prosecute social media activists, bloggers and journalists.As noted by Brechenmacher (2017, 69-70), given the Ethiopian government's extensive capacity to monitor citizen communications, including mobile phones and landlines … the law's vague language grants authorities the power to prosecute journalists who publish articles about protest movements, armed opposition groups, or any other individuals deemed as terrorists or anti-peace.
It is therefore common in Zimbabwe and Ethiopia for ordinary citizens and social media activists to be prosecuted and detained for what they post online.For example, in Zimbabwe, Vikas Mavhudzi was accused of subversion because of a message he posted on the Facebook page of Morgan Tsvangirai, the then Prime Minister of Zimbabwe.The message read: 'I'm overwhelmed don't know what to say Mr PM.What happened in Egypt is sending shock waves to all dictators around the world.No weapon but unity of purpose.Worth emulating hey' (BBC News 2011).Although he was later discharged, he spent a month in remand prison.In Ethiopia, the former Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) government used anti-terror laws to arrest bloggers and social media activists such as the Zone Nine bloggers, 1 journalists and activists such as Seyoum Teshome that have a huge following on Facebook.Due to these widely publicised arrests, the 'networked individuals' in social media movements often practise self-censorship or use pseudo-names to evade arrestfurther reinforcing the fear and absence of trust that inhibits high-risk activism.The effect is that networked individuals remain isolated from other members of social media activist groups they supposedly belong to, making them ineffective against a solid authoritarian regime that 'lurks' on isolated individuals.

Resource mobilisation theory
To transition from networked individuals to a collective with a shared belief and common purpose, social media activists must take stock of resources at their disposal and mobilise for resources they lack.The resource mobilisation theory, which emerged in the 1970s in response to grievance-based approaches that focused on the presence of relative deprivation and strains to explain collective action (Gurr 1970), provides a cue to how social media activists can mobilise resources essential to aiding their transition.Commonly, the networked individuals are galvanised by a set of grievances, but those grievances, besides being ubiquitous in society, are not sufficient to get the movement off the ground.Going beyond grievances, resource mobilisation theory focuses on the mobilisation process and highlights the importance of resource availability, aggregation and management for successful action (McCarthy and Zald 1977).In resource mobilisation theory, a resource may refer to a wide range of both material and non-material assets.In general, human, material, moral and organisational resources are considered necessary for social movements (Edwards andMcCarthy 2004, 2007).In the context of social media activism, technology is regarded as a key resource.These resources are important in harnessing grievances towards successful collective action.However, these assets alone are not enough to study the impact of social media activism.
Of particular focus in this article is the influence of technology, which is not new.Since the 1990s, access to and familiarity with technology was considered an important resource for social movements to succeed (Rolfe 2005) and sustain their capacity under repressive political environments (Zihnioğlu 2023).Accordingly, various movements used new technologies such as email and websites to promote ideas, attract attention and support, and in return generate political pressure (Sandoval-Almazan and Gil-Garcia 2014).More recently, social media is seen as a necessary key resource, albeit not sufficient in itself for an effective social movement.The significance of social media is in the creation of what Castells (2015, 23) called 'networked social movements' -that is, semi-spontaneous coalitions of people relying on the connection between free communication on social media and the occupation of urban spaces.The possibilities and dangers of social media for individuals are a much-studied topic (Trottier 2012;Boyd 2014).The basic question on social media's relationship with social movements is whether it can provide the impetus needed to make movements successful in achieving their intended objectives.On one hand, scholars argue that social media contributes to the likelihood of successful movements by facilitating inter-and intra-group communication, dissemination of information, and creating crosscutting networking mechanisms (Rane and Salem 2012; Segerberg and Bennett 2011).Other scholars demonstrate how social media shapes human behaviour (Shirky 2008) and decisions (Tüfekçi and Wilson 2012), and how it helps to create a collective identity (Gerbaudo and Treré 2015;Kavada 2015).In a way, social media facilitates connection and coalition building, mobilisation of participants and amplification of alternative narratives.This, in return, helps movements to scale up (Mundt, Ross, and Burnett 2018).Nonetheless, sceptics refer to online activism as slacktivism, clicktivism, and keyboard activism to question its worthiness (see, for instance, Gladwell 2010;Morozov 2009).These sceptics criticise techno-optimists for understating the capacity of existing regimes to adapt to technology (Kidd and McIntosh 2016).
Under constraining political environments, such as in Ethiopia and Zimbabwe, two factors are important for social media activism to retain influence or contribute to a successful movement.The first factor is alliance formation.Alliance formation is important for social media activism because mass protests and movements are rarely staged by a single group.Rather, earlier studies established that multiple groups representing different sectors of society take part in the efforts of these movements (Chang 2008;Rucht 2004).Under alliance formation, other scholars examined how cooperation and collaboration mobilised people and supported the movement.Accordingly, various studies demonstrate that alliances between different social groups increase resources, provide leverage, motivate protest events (Chang 2008), facilitate mobilisation (Gerhards and Rucht 1992), enhance its impact (Zihnioğlu 2019), create opportunities, and shape behaviour (Della Porta and Rucht 1995).Alliance formation is therefore important in social media activism to ensure that online and offline activism complement one another.The second factor that contributes to a successful use of social media as a resource is organisational structure.The resource mobilisation theory holds that social movements gain access to resources through the agency of existing organisations (Edwards and Gillham 2013).Indeed, social organisation itself is considered a resource (Edwards and McCarthy 2004).Despite social media activists being often loosely networked individuals, they need coordination, cooperation and division of labour.Organisational structure, albeit a virtual one, is determinative for social media activists.These two factors will be employed in this article to assess the effectiveness of #ThisFlag vis-à-vis #OromoProtests.In addition, we analyse how networked individuals in social media can be transformed into change agents who can hold governments to account.In doing so, we explore the limits and potentials of social media as a resource for activism.We do not disregard the significance of other factors, such as political opportunity structures, in shaping social movements.However, focusing on social media as a resource brings important insights into social media activism in repressive environments.

Leadership
Contrary to assertions that social media campaigns are spontaneous and require minimal organisation, most internet users are unable to mobilise and organise themselves promptly in response to a crisis.They often rely on prominent de facto leaders to galvanise and organise the cyber-masses into a revolutionary mass able to revolt or resist state excesses.In Zimbabwe, it was Pastor Evan Mawarire who came into the limelight through a Facebook video under the hashtag #ThisFlag in which he described how corruption and injustice had impoverished the nation -making him fail to provide for his family.As the video went viral, he urged Zimbabweans to reclaim their flag and demand accountability from their political leaders.By the time he was arrested a month later, he was already the dominant figure in social media activism in Zimbabwe.At the Rotten Row Magistrates' Court in Harare where he appeared on charges of attempting to subvert a constitutional government, thousands of supporters gathered outside the court, while 200 lawyers appeared as his defence team.In a country devoid of non-political leaders able to galvanise a nation, Pastor Evan Mawarire became the de facto leader of the social movement for economic and political reform in Zimbabwe.
A major challenge for social media campaigns like #ThisFlag that depend on 'prominent de facto leaders' is that they struggle to transition the 'spontaneous campaign' of a collection of 'networked individuals' into a sustained collective action of groups with a shared belief and common purpose sufficient to withstand state-sponsored repression.Without a supporting organisational structure, #ThisFlag was reliant on an individual leader, who was easily arrested and forced into exile by the Zimbabwean government.The EPRDF and ZANU-PF regimes in Ethiopia and Zimbabwe often target the leadership of social media movements to prevent the agglutination of the 'networked individuals' into a social group organised under a structured leadership.By targeting Evan Mawarire, and forcing him into exile, the ZANU-PF regime scuttled the emerging social movement, forcing those who had come out into the shadows of cyberspace and back into anonymity and hiding.Similarly, the arrest of Seyoum Teshome, bloggers, journalists, and leaders of the Oromo people in Ethiopia contributed to inhibit the transformation of the 'networked individuals' into a collective social movement.Thus, in targeting the prominent de facto leaders, a government can ensure that as the crisis in the country unravels, it does not find an organised social movement occupying physical space but instead finds a lone 'charismatic leader' followed by loosely 'networked individuals' , both of whom are unable to challenge a highly organised authoritarian regime.

Structure and organisation
In both Zimbabwe and Ethiopia, there are no cordial relations between the state and civil society.The relationship, in the little pockets where it exists, is more confrontational, as in the relationship between two conflicting groups.At the centre of the state-civil society struggle are the heart and mind of the citizenry.The ability to produce, control and disseminate information determines the victor and the loser, because in authoritarian regimes a monopoly of information is the currency of power.For digital activism to gain political power that enables it to influence policy changes and hold a government to account, it is not enough to create and disseminate information online to thousands or even millions of loosely connected individuals on Twitter and Facebook.The 'networked individuals' have to constitute a 'social group' with an organisational structure and leadership able to confront the government.To constitute a social group able to exercise leadership means that social media activists must extrapolate the 'hidden' networked individuals into a social group, making the focus of the struggle the social group rather than the individual -a reversal of Rainie and Wellman's (2012) conceptualisation of the 'networked individual' .Part of the process is to set up leadership and organisational structures that guarantee the movement's survival and continuity beyond its immediate 'prominent' leaders.
To transition a network of individuals to be able to survive the onslaughts of highly structured and organised authoritarian regimes, social media activists need to evolve from being dependent on the popularity of their de facto online leaders into institutionalised movements with a leadership and organisational structure.The first reason for that transition is that unlike social movements dealing with non-political issues, they take 'on a powerful and organized establishment' (Gladwell 2010).Authoritarian regimes that target social media campaigns have highly structured and organised systems of oppression.As noted by Antonio Gramsci, the traditional ruling class, which has numerous trained cadres, changes men and programmes and, with greater speed than is achieved by the subordinate classes, reabsorbs the control that was slipping from the grasp … it retains power, reinforces it for the time being, and uses it to crush its adversary and disperse the leading cadres, who cannot be very numerous or highly trained.(Gramsci 1971, 211) Although Gramsci was not referring to social media activism, his descriptions of how ruling regimes operate is similar to how the regimes in Zimbabwe and Ethiopia are operating, in relation not just to social media activists but to other political opponents.In that respect it is only a structured leadership, which aggregates the multiple frustrations of the 'networked individuals' into a collective single frustration able to achieve a political objective and challenge an authoritarian regime.
Yet even as #ThisFlag challenged ZANU-PF's political hegemony, Mawarire continued to insist that he was not the leader of the movement, that the movement had no leadership, and that every citizen was a leader in the movement, even though Mawarire and later Fadzayi Mahere were both visible in local and international media as organisers, leaders and spokespersons of #ThisFlag.As noted by Eyerman and Jamison (1991, 94), their visibility, which was 'helped along by sources outside the movement like mass media, is the basis for the usual distinctions between the leaders and the led' .In Zimbabwe, confirmation of the leaders of social media campaigns also occurs by way of their prosecution and detention, which is seen as a mark of distinction between the leaders of the movement and those that are led.Still, #ThisFlag remained without a known organisational structure and central leadership.Without leadership authority, #ThisFlag failed to detach itself from Evan Mawarire, such that when he fled the country, the campaign anti-climaxed and his supporters retreated into the shadows of internet anonymity.It also faltered under pressure of internal strife emanating from a lack of cohesion and collective consensus among its thousands of followers on Facebook and Twitter.
In addition, the lack of structure means that cyber protests remain unorganised and unable to counter the highly organised state machinery.Like conventional social movements that must mobilise and provide leadership to the masses, 'networked individuals' also require a leadership able to mobilise and organise them into a movement that can effect change.This is partly because an individual's personal connection to the campaign matters in determining the transition of online activism to offline physical protests.As put by Gladwell, high-risk activism is a 'strong-tie' phenomenon because 'weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism' (Gladwell 2010).In retrospect, it can be argued that the 'spontaneity' of #ThisFlag as a social media campaign meant that it lacked general structure and organisation and took for granted the need to embolden and transition from cyberspace to physical space.The naivety of Mawarire's preference for spontaneity and insistence on a horizontal structure where everyone is a leader exposed #ThisFlag to internal strife and confusion.As noted by Gladwell (2010), if 'networks don't have a centralized leadership structure and clear lines of authority, they have a real difficulty reaching consensus and setting goals.They cannot think strategically; they are chronically prone to conflict and error.How do you make difficult choices about tactics or strategy or philosophy direction when everyone has an equal say?' (Gladwell 2010).The lack of structure became the weapon used against them by the ZANU-PF regime to organise and implement a string of anti-movement strategies to repress #ThisFlag before it matured into a social movement able to organise people to march in the streets and threaten the establishment.

Adapting to new realities
Social media activism that remains grounded in cyberspace and fails to adapt to local contexts and new realities often struggles to transition into physical space.Unlike in democratic countries where governments respond to internet petitions, in authoritarian regimes, social media activism needs to transition into the physical space because apart from cyber counterattacks, authoritarian regimes use physical means of repression such as prosecution, torture or forced disappearances.That transition demands high levels of adaptability and change of strategies to stay ahead of the regime that often is better equipped and has a wide range of repressive resources at its disposal.This is the transitional dynamic that #ThisFlag failed to take note of; hence, after a series of attacks on Mawarire, it recoiled from a budding social movement able to occupy physical space, returning to being a 'network of individuals' .To adapt to its local context, social media should be regarded as just a mobilisation tool rather than the battleground that the struggle for change inhabits and where it takes form.That is because instead of focusing on social media, the government combines physical attacks with strategies such as increasing the cost of internet data and sometimes jamming the internet to reduce communication among activists.Accordingly, because they remained internet-based, #ThisFlag failed to make the transition from a social media campaign into a mass movement able to coordinate their activities with conventional social movements and political actors, such as the Tajamuka/Sesjikile Campaign and the opposition political parties, which can mobilise thousands of their supporters into high-risk activities, such as demonstrations and street protests.Instead, the 'networked individuals' in #ThisFlag have persistently veiled their general passivity with active participation in sharing videos and opinions online -something they would not be able to do in person.It is this failure to adapt combined with the false delusion of being active but not being effective that has kept the social media activism in Zimbabwe on the fringes of political action.

Elitism versus the masses
In many respects, the internet has reproduced existing power and class relations in societies, particularly in Africa.The power of the elite, widely defined as people able to afford a smartphone and with access to internet and social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, is wrapped in a false sense of omnipresent influence over the masses (comprising the rest, who cannot afford internet or a smartphone).'Social media is not free from the techno-materiality of access, which not only determines who has access, but also how they access and consume information, and what kind of information they prefer to consume' (Lim 2013, 651).The power that these elites have in creating, packaging and disseminating information is, however, limited by its lack of relevance to the masses, especially in rural areas.As an example, #ThisFlag was designed and packaged in a way that resonated with middle-class young families struggling to make ends meet due to government excesses.The first video portrayed the image of an honest middle-aged man struggling to pay school fees for his children and beginning to question whether the country was being fair to him.He then called on people to carry their Zimbabwean flags for 10 days as a way of showing their commitment to making their country better.The low-risk nature of the action made the video viral, but when high-risk action was called for, few turned out in the streets or stayed away from work as had been called for.Appadurai, Rao, and Walton (2004, 63) notes that due to their lack of resources with which to express their views and achieve results, the poor lack 'voice' .Notably, framing the struggle of the rural poor so that it resonates with the interests of the urban middle class is a particular challenge.Often without strong symbolic representation and no iconic figures thrusting themselves into the forefront of the issue, the plight of the poor often does not generate headlines.(Lim 2013, 648) For the rural masses, together with the poor urban dwellers, it is traditional social movements dependent on physical presence and collective community ties that lead to action rather than social media, which is out of their reach.As a result, there is a disconnect between the masses and the 'new' elite empowered by their smartphones and social media accessibility, such that social media activism remains within the domain of the elite circles but with peripheral influence on the masses.
The investments of personal time and money actually needed to go online, moreover, further isolate and disaffect individuals from their communities, create an ever wide gap between the knowledge-rich and the knowledge-poor, and distract people from social problems and collective-action remedies by giving them a false sense of political effectiveness.(Saco 2002, xv-xvi) Accordingly, the 'elite' social media activism, particularly in Zimbabwe, does not collaborate with mass social movements led by opposition political parties and grassroots organisations.In the grand scheme of things, rural masses are totally neglected and are not part of the 'networked individuals' .The implication is that there is little or no consensus between the 'networked individuals' and the masses.The social media activists are therefore grossly disintegrated in ideology, strategy and effect and have remained detached from the masses, giving the impression that they constitute a 'new class' of activists.

The process of institution: lessons from the #OromoProtests
This institutionalisation and transformation of 'networked individuals' into a collective social movement group able to hold the government to account can take different forms, and largely depend on the context.In authoritarian regimes, the process of institutionalisation normally begins with the framing of the crisis that the social movement intends to confront.In the case of #ThisFlag the 'national' crisis was largely formulated in middle-class terms through the medium of social media, which alienated the poor and rural populations who had no access to the platforms.By failing to connect with the poor and rural population, #ThisFlag could not create effective alliances between social forces.This was different from the protests in Oromia that articulated the crisis in nationalistic terms, with the igniting factor and rallying point being the government's proposed expansion of Addis Ababa into the Oromia region.The #OromoProtests were therefore more focused than #ThisFlag because their 'crisis' was framed in a simplified narrative that the Oromo people of different classes understood and identified with.
Accordingly, in the case of the #OromoProtests, the creation of meaning and identity of the movement was a result of nationalistic grievances and ideals which unified the Oromo against the other nationalities.In the case of #ThisFlag in Zimbabwe, the meaning and identity of the campaign was a creation of its reluctant leader, Evan Mawarire.The effect is that the identity and strategies in the Zimbabwean case are intertwined with an individual rather than a collective.Unlike in Ethiopia where the Oromo protest movement was founded on the collective identity and grievances of the Oromo people, in Zimbabwe, #ThisFlag was mostly identified with its leader, and hence lacked the capacity to construct a sustained collective identity and grievances that went beyond social class.The social movements in Zimbabwe often become identified with the leader and lack a broader collective identity.
Secondly, the process of self-formation of the social media campaign ought to elaborately include constitution of the Other, to whom the 'networked individuals' direct their frustration and protest action.Without the formation of a collective identity that enables the 'networked individuals' to define themselves as 'we' and identify their 'other' so that there is an 'us versus them' , their action will remain devoid of political character and action.As argued by Bakardjieva (2015, 986), such a '"connective action" … [can]not challenge a government, or a hegemonic cultural code' .The #OromoProtests were clearly directed against the federal government of Ethiopia on a specific issue of marginalisation and disenfranchisement of the Oromo 'nationality' -the rallying point being the expansion of Addis Ababa.Fisseha Tekle, a human rights researcher for Amnesty International, told the Voice of America that 'In Oromia region, the immediate cause for the protest was about the master plan, that expanded the border of the city to Oromia.… These are the immediate causes that have sparked the demonstration and the opposition rallies' (Craig 2016).
The third factor is that in its early phases a budding social movement must constitute itself through more or less traditional means of mobilisation, by creating its own organisations and its own networks in order to create a sense of collectivity and to ensure its continuity over time and place.(Eyerman and Jamison 1991, 101) As discussed above, this means that there must be a structure and organisation of the movement, and an understanding of the nature of the government that the movement is struggling against.The understanding of the nature of government and its oppressive tools will enable the activists to adapt their mobilisation strategies.Unlike #ThisFlag which remained focused on mobilising through social media, for the Oromo activists, social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter were complementary to physical mobilisation of their constituencies by other grassroots organisations and nationalist groups such as the Oromo Liberation Front.Kolo (2016) attributes the effect of the Oromia mass protests to grassroots mobilisation by grassroots movements that tapped 'into a groundswell of shared discontent' .As a result, even when the Ethiopian government blocked social networking sites and killed protestors, the protests in Oromia persisted.
Related to the adaptation of mobilisation strategies is the need for social media activists to recombine their expertise with that of others through alliances to create new spaces for holding the government and authority to account.As argued by Tamuka Chirimambowa and Tinashe Chimedza (Chirimambowa and Chimedza 2017), social media activists in Zimbabwe looked with disdain on conventional social movements, making it difficult for 'the old and the new to gel together in couching new counter-hegemonic narratives to construct counter-power so as to democratize the state and expand opportunities for citizens' .In Ethiopia, even though the Oromo have had longstanding historical differences, they have been able to hold joint protests 'increasingly accepting solidarity, not unity, as the principle underpinning their collective actions' (Kolo 2016).The advantages of the 'old and new' recombining is that the old has strong individual connections among their members, enabling them to engage in high-risk activities such as demonstrations and protests that social media activists on their own do not have.Furthermore, cooperation with already institutionalised conventional social movements will enable the social media movements to institutionalise faster and convert their 'networked individuals' that they are not able to vet to weed out infiltrators into 'physical' members able to build consensus and collectively set agendas and action plans.
The success of social media activism, therefore, depends on other factors beyond the internet space.In the case of the Oromo protests, deep-seated tensions over territory and distribution of state resources and power among the different Ethiopian nationalities was the main mobilising factor.The protests and demonstrations in the region were organised at the Oromia 'national' level and bore the characteristics of nationalism; hence, there was consensus on the grievances, how they had to be solved and the effect they required.In Zimbabwe, #ThisFlag lacked that consensus.In the Oromo protests, social media resulted in a 'networked collective' , whereas in Zimbabwe, #ThisFlag remained a 'network of individuals' .#ThisFlag therefore struggled to 'filter out aspects of a rather diffuse worldview, which as a source of collective identity has served as a framework for mobilising supporters, into clearly defined items for political negotiation in the institutional frameworks of the established political culture' (Eyerman and Jamison 1991, 101).

Conclusion
There is no doubt that benefits of the internet to citizens and activists in authoritarian are myriad.First, the internet 'democratizes information by simplifying the creation, duplication, storage, and distribution of data' (Saco 2002, xv).In authoritarian regimes where information production and access are restricted, social media creates space through the agency of ordinary citizens to produce and disseminate information far and wider than their regimes would normally allow.In that respect, social media liberalises information, taking away the autonomy of the state.As shown by #ThisFlag in Zimbabwe and the #OromoProtests in Ethiopia, and in line with earlier studies, not only has social media become an important resource for spreading new ideas and mass mobilisation but with adaptation and skill, it can be used to create a collective identity and coordination of action.
On the other hand, as discussed in this article, on its own, social media hardly can sustain the collective challenge against a well-organised and structured authoritarian regime like the EPRDF and ZANU-PF.Its limitation has inevitably attracted criticism that it tends to shift 'energies [away] from organizations that promote strategic and disciplined activity and toward those which promote resilience and adaptability.It makes it easier for activists to express themselves, and harder for that expression to have any impact' (Gladwell 2010).Terms such as keyboard activists and clicktivism emphasise the 'worthiness of digital activism, often deeming it subordinate to "real" (physical) activism' (Lim 2013, 637).The case of #ThisFlag in Zimbabwe, where social media activists have failed to transform their campaign into the physical space, illustrates the challenges and, to a greater extent, the inadequacies of social media activism in authoritarian regimes.Without an organisational structure, social media activism remains disjointed and unable to counter the highly organised state machinery.Like social movements that must mobilise and provide leadership to the masses, 'networked individuals' also require a leadership able to mobilise and organise them into a movement able to effect change.
At the core of the criticism against social media activism is its failure to transform its 'networked individuals' into social change agents able to build and sustain common purposes, take collective action and achieve a collective objective.That transition can only materialise when activism in social media institutionalises and sets up structures that ensure their survival beyond the prominent de facto leaders.That also means that social media should be seen for what it is: a resource for mobilisation that rallies people into action relevant to their context.As argued earlier, cyber activists in Zimbabwe considered social media a causal agent able to effect change, but as Mugabe retorted, he cannot be removed by Twitter.This suggests that social media should not be perceived as a causal agent having a pivotal role in promoting social change or advancing democracy.There is nothing intrinsic in social media that automatically achieves this potential.Societal contexts and arrangements around the technology are key to its impact on politics.(Lim 2013, 638) Accordingly, there must be a combination of online and offline mobilisation strategies and plans of action, such that even if the government shuts down internet as has been the case in Ethiopia, the movement is not gravely affected.
As the cases in Zimbabwe and Ethiopia illustrate, two factors play a decisive role in countering these limitations.First, the alliances that social media activists make with other social movements matter.One key difference between the #ThisFlag movement in Zimbabwe and the hashtag #OromoProtests is the extent of their reach in the society.The #ThisFlag movement largely remained within the urban middle class with access to technology; it failed to trickle down to the masses and connect with grassroots organisations and opposition political parties that could organise mass offline campaigns and protests.On the other hand, #OromoProtests was directed against the federal government through the issue of marginalisation and disenfranchisement of the two nationalities.This served as a connective action among different segments of the society, and it helped build trust among these groups and ultimately transform the 'networked individuals' into a social group.Complementing online activism with offline activism also helped to keep the flame of contention going when the government suppressed the online tools for mobilisation.In parallel with this, the second factor is the existence, or lack thereof, of an organisational structure.Social media activism is often based on loose networks to which individuals can contribute using hashtags and other engagement features.Therefore, bringing the masses through traditional means of mobilisation and thereby building a network is not only important for coordination, cooperation and division of labour but also contributes to the participants' sense of collectivity and mutual trust.