Understanding new media threat to African security, stability

By Swaib K Nsereko

This remains a grey area for academic thesis, despite several literatures being already out.

In the North African Arab spring at the turn of this decade; both the internet and cellular phone featured as exponential mobilisation tools. They astounded the security apparatus.

Today's modern security systems are diversified in untraditional areas such as mineral security, environmental security and cyber security. But the rapidity with which new media technologies are evolving seems to outpace their competence, especially in emerging zones, such as nations in Africa.

In Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, security elites were used to neutralise the nucleus of trouble shooters by confining ring leaders away from the larger society.  

New media—mainly internet and smart phones circumvented this. Intelligence informants looked for the central leadership of the ‘people's power' in vein. It was amorphous—everyone with a phone was a leader—directing, updating and urging on the forward movement. At length, the security machinery collapsed as so did stability.

After North Africa, a fear has persisted in most African nations of catching the Arab spring flue. Africa is actually experimenting several approaches to this security dimension.

Is it a real threat or a façade?

If it is a threat, it then has a universally acceptable counter measure.   In actual sense if the social media threat was, as often hyped real, it would be pointless to have it anywhere. This is because security and stability on the one hand as well as citizen dissension on the other, are constants. The perceived social media threat can, therefore, largely be seen as a façade.

The Ugandan context 

Social media is an extension of the traditional media—newspaper, radio and TV. Governments that are not shaken with it have skilled their personnel in relating with it the same way done with traditional media.

While new media can mobilise for a popular security activity, and citizenry engagement, it can also reinforce the positions of the security apparatus by supplying real time sentiments of the people for appropriate response.  A shut down eclipses all these opportunities.

Hence, in emerging democracies, the growing use of the internet and cellular telephony must be perceived as both empowering people to actively engage with the leadership, the political parties, and political systems, and at the same time reinforcing the official status quo by offering greater leverage to those already in power.

Generally in Uganda, the media remain an elitist abode. Their role and influence on the urban centered is different from the rural based. The poor urban youths are largely college graduates. In spite of their frustrations, they are capable of questioning the credibility of content on social media as are less unlikely to question that in the traditional media. The rural dwellers may take ages before exploring the information delivery potential of a smart phone besides ordinary calls.  

Therefore, for a safer sustainable measure, security chiefs can act smarter and even pro-actively. They must urge the political elites toward youth involvement in national economic, social, and political structures. They must too, encourage pragmatic democratic practice across the board. This will mitigate even the remotest imagination of a mass uprising.   

The writer is lecturer at the Department of Mass Communication of the Islamic University in Uganda