Hans Magnus Enzensberger, a classic Marxist thinker, outlined seven characteristics that would constitute emancipatory media. Among them is one which posits that media has the power of mobilizing masses in a society. This specific aspect will be the center of my argument in this research supporting the fact that the mobilizing power of the media acts as a way of emancipatory as this is the same concept that brought up emancipation of Zimbabwean citizens through the social and political movements since 2015.
This research firstly intends to go beyond Hans Enzensberger’s “New Media” conceptualization that the media provides the power to mobilize masses and the type of elements it offers to social and political movements. Enzensberger speaks of ‘new media’, which he refers to electronic media: the radio, microphones and cameras having the power to mobilize masses. This means that they make possible mass participation in a social and socialized productive process. In this environment, every receiver can easily become a transmitter and make his voice be heard by others. However, to make this possible, those who are concerned about it should organize themselves and form an architecture of participation.
This Emancipation, in fact, does not come along naturally with technology but also requires the citizens to be active physically. Enzensberger states that ‘all media is manipulative’ because all the actions a producer takes to create a media product treat the given material to achieve a certain goal. The research will also look at how electronic media has come to being manipulative in the realm of the social and political movements. Electronic media offer new possibilities to challenge the social and political situation.
This is due to the fact that, with these kinds of media, everyone can switch his/her role from receiver to transmitter of a certain message. Enzensberger’s conceptualization is well related to contemporary social movements taking place in Zimbabwe or we can use his thoughts to justify the eruption of those social and political movements.
Enzensberger in his 1970 essay: Constituents of a Theory of The Media, indicates the different directions that citizens can take by the use of technology to advance themselves into emancipation. The media have power to mobilize masses and during the time the essay was written, the media paved way for possible mass participation in a social and socialized productive process, the means which now became in the hand of the masses themselves.
The media is making it possible to record historical material and then make it available at will to the people. It would be wrong to say that media equipment are just means of consumption, but in fact, they are transforming into means of production. Enzensberger brings up the notion that
“there must be a more participatory model of
communication and information exchange at the same time criticizing the
capitalist systems controlled by the bourgeoisie and influential class, who are
inappropriate to handle the new media to its maximum.”
He influences the new socialist left to rethink the use of media and define radical changes to encourage a correspondence of information across different classes. Enzensberger says that it seems that because of the media’s progressive potential, it is seen to be a threat as they challenge the bourgeoisie culture.
Now with the rise of the internet, with Zimbabweans’ efforts in having great hopes and working well with this medium as a form of emancipatory structure, Enzensberger’s postulations seemed to become true. Social movements have been in existence way before the 19th century, but there has been a shift in the past fifty years on how the movements were brought up. There is a distinction in time as to when certain type of movements took place; the old social movements that started during the era of the New Left in the 1960s and 1970s which consisted of activists, students and academic professionals in the Western countries who campaigned for social change requiring a broader range of reforms on civil rights and gender roles.
Zimbabwe is a good example to the way new media has been used lately in much the matter that Enzensberger described that it is a means of creating an emancipatory use of media. The dominant model used by the Zimbabwean government to disseminate information is through broadcasting on its one state owned channel Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) whereby there consists of very few transmitters but a lot of receivers. This aligns well with Enzensberger’s thought about the leftist era when the media system during the 1960s and 1970s was totally corrupt therefore it being manipulative and very dangerous.
New media users can take part in transmitting messages by simply switching and adapting to the process. According to Enzensberger “the equipment like television or film does not serve communication but prevents it.” Proving that television does not provide the platform for feedback. Now unlike the old media, electronic media and the internet in Zimbabwe’s case, is making it possible for mass participation to take place in a social and socialized productive process, where the practical means are in the hands of the masses themselves.
In line with Enzensberger’s constituent of media being a tool for mobilizing masses, it goes with Benjamin’s who predicted media’s liberating and destructive powers. He outlined the reciprocal correlation between the author and the masses: the former should be the agent of the latter, while the masses need to become authors themselves.
Enzensberger adds that the leftist groups have shown much more radical progress in dealing with media than any political group. Relating this notion to his essay on the industrialization of the mind, where he stated “the mind industry can take on anything, digest it, reproduce it, and pour it out. Whatever our minds can conceive of is grist to its mill; nothing will leave it unadulterated: it is capable of turning any idea into a slogan and any work of the imagination into a hit.” We can apply this to the social and political upheaval in Zimbabwe.
With the expansion of internet usage globally and particularly in Zimbabwe, there is now a debate as to whether the internet would apply to Enzensberger’s new media conceptualization. In some cases, it is regarded as new media as it plays a huge role in the transmission of information. Applying the basis of participation of citizens, this would involve the use of certain technologies including factors like their availability and costs. In the case of Zimbabwe, Participation in the internet realm is still an almost exclusive privilege to educated and financially stable people in the country.
Launching participatory social movements through the internet’s social media networks can also be affected by the issue of insufficient supply of electricity and even the inaccessibility of internet in Zimbabwe. Therefore, the mobilizer’s message reaches a minute group of people, mainly those in the working class who have an easy access to the internet and who can afford to have electricity throughout. Zimbabwe has a population of 16 million people, and out of that number, as of March 2016, access to the internet stood at 50 percent, according to official government data from the telecoms regulator, which incorporates mobile broadband access. There are only 6.7 million who have access to mobile internet. Most social movements that started on social media platforms mainly Facebook, managed to inform and mobilize a minute number of people.
However, in other cases, the few who have it, can use it well and then pass information by word of mouth, the movements can still become effective. Some movements nowadays are created on the internet then moved to the actual physical movement/gathering of masses in a physical sphere. Communication is vital in mobilizing people therefore there is the need of a consistent platform of communication like social media sites. Castells said that “the Occupy Movement in New York City, was born on the internet, diffused by the internet and maintained its presence on the internet.” The same applies to one movement in Zimbabwe called #ThisFlag which was created by a church Pastor who recorded videos enlightening his followers of the atrocities being committed by the then Zimbabwean president Mugabe. He later on mobilized people on Facebook and Twitter to march in protest against the corrupt government officials in July 2016.
The fully emancipatory use of electronic media is decentralized rather than being used for the work of only authorized personnel like journalists and government officials. Emancipatory involves citizens at a whole for the process to function well. Enzensberger states that “Only a free socialist society will be able to make the new media fully productive.” Rather it being a broadcasting model, it becomes like that of telephone where there is feedback of a message resulting in a full complete communication process of the sender and receiver.
An Egyptian activist and computer engineer, Wael Ghonim, stated that if you want to liberate a society, just give them the internet. The internet works in tremendous ways in terms of mobilizing a huge number of masses within a society. The new media with its appropriate use and timing can have subversive power to dismantle a corrupt regime. Just as Enzensberger revealed about Frantz Fanon who shed light on the new technologies’ power of subversion that “the transistor receiver was one of the most important weapons in the third world’s fight for freedom.” Even the Former South African Minister, Albert Hertzog acknowledged that ‘television will lead to the ruin of the white man in south Africa.” The same concept applies to the incident that later took place in Zimbabwe in November 2017 when the former President later resigned as the President after receiving pressure from citizens through the use of the media.
In the past two years, there has been a fluctuation and eruption of political movements in Zimbabwe. Civilians have been trying to bring up protests in order to overthrow the 93-year-old Former President Robert Mugabe who ruled the country for 37 years and eventually resigned in November 2017. A lot of social media activisms especially those targeting Mugabe started evolving tremendously and most activists sort to use Facebook and Twitter as an effective way to mobilize people. The main reason people resorted to using social media as a way of mobilizing and informing masses was because doing it in the public sphere would result in them being arrested or even be abducted by Robert Mugabe’s supporters.
Zimbabweans’ have always been seeking a means of emancipating themselves from the economic and social upheaval for the past decade. Mobilizing masses has always been difficult as an individual or group of protestors could easily be threatened or arrested for subverting the constitution or undermining former President Mugabe’s policies and ideas by means of protesting. Citizens instead have become more willing to use these non-conventional forms of collective action against an established and authoritarian regime. Towards this end, Zimbabweans seem to have been inspired by the use of social media in the Arab Springs in the Middle East. Over the years when internet usage started increasing in the country and moreover with the use of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, people have started to communicate well with one another, discussing the plausible measures they could take to protest peacefully.
The internet has provided an easier means of mobilizing masses and Zimbabweans have used it effectively as a way of emancipatory, meaning that Enzensberger’s concept of media paves a way for mobilizing masses for emancipation is true. There is widespread thinking that some social movements and individual activists have been driven by outside influence of Zimbabwean diasporians living in other African countries, Europe, America and elsewhere who were advising, informing and educating the activists on how to mobilize, construct effective protests without violating any laws as a means of attaining productive protests.
With the cash crisis in Zimbabwe, activists like #ThisFlag and #DigDeeper launched Go Fund-me accounts that received support and funding from individuals abroad. Diasporians contacts have had an important effect on social movements back home. This is actually one of the most prominent, strong and important elements of the social and political movements. The Diaspora is one of the major sources of money for the movements. This shows the effect media has had on many elements that brought emancipation in the country, not only for informing masses to mobilize, but also as a way to communicate with people who would aid the activists in mobilizing.
The media mobilizes forces and has managed to elevate and bring effective social and political movements in Zimbabwe. Although there is a low number of people who have direct and easy access to the internet in the country, the few have sort of finding means of also communicating through informing one another by WhatsApp messaging. According to Tech Zim, an online technology magazine, as of April 2017, there is an estimate of at least 5.2 million WhatsApp users in Zimbabwe which is higher than the number of Facebook users which was estimated at 3.8 million. Media has the power of emancipatory but it also requires the masses to apply physical action and not be too reliant on the media.
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Social Media is
Emboldening young Zimbabweans to finally stand up to Mugabe https://qz.com/768868/social-media-is-emboldening-young-zimbabweans-to-finally-stand-up-to-mugabe/
The man behind
#ThisFlag, Zimbabwe's accidental movement for change https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/26/this-flag-zimbabwe-evan-mawarire-accidental-movement-for-change
