From tribe to neo-tribe

Abstract

This study investigates the shift in patterns of affiliation within Zambian politics, as observed on Facebook during the 2021 general election cycle. Specifically, the study investigates the role of social media in the shift from ethnic tribes to emerging online neo-tribes as salient forms of affiliation or association. This is against the background of political mobilisation on ethnic grounds being a common feature in African politics, including Zambia’s. Historically, ethnic identity has played a central role in the mobilisation and eventual distribution of votes in Zambian elections. Of further interest to the study is the increasingly recognised potential of social media to enable and propagate disruptive messages and ideologies, such as xenophobia, cultural homogeneity, neo-Nazism, anti-immigration and nationalism. The study takes particular interest in the prevalence, and possible implications for a nascent democracy like Zambia’s, of what may be termed anti-democratic aspects of social media, such as disinformation, hate speech, polarisation, echo chambers and bots, during the 2021 election cycle. The study adopts a qualitative methodological orientation. It employs a mixed-methods (thematic content analysis, focus group discussions and individual interviews) case study approach. The content analysis is based on purposively selected Facebook posts and related comments published from 1st May to 31st August 2021 – the period from when presidential nominees were announced and campaigns started in earnest to immediately after the election. Participants and broad discussion points for the focus groups and individual interviews were identified from the Facebook posts. The study draws on the theories of the public sphere, social media and elections, tribalism and neo-tribalism. The findings of this study reveal that neo-tribes, mediated by social media, emerged as salient forms of political affiliation in the 2021 Zambian elections. Some distinctive differences with ethnic tribes include the fact that these online neo-tribes organised within and across ethnic lines, were temporarily situated, affectual, and not geographically bound (Cova & Cova, 2002; Clay, 2018; Clark et al, 2019; Hibbing, 2021). The study also reveals some contradictions to the traditional expectation of neo-tribes, for example their ephemeral nature, when some members of these online neo-tribes report their interactions transitioning into long-term political relationships. The findings demonstrate a similarity in mechanisms of connection and establishing in-groups and out-groups. This is particularly observed in online neo-tribes rallying around a political leader as a mechanism for building community and using accusations against out-groups as ways of building tribes, all of which are associated with ethnic tribes. With regard the normative stakes of the study, the conclusion is that the rise of neo-tribes as salient forms of political affiliation in Zambia represents a tension between democratic progress on the one hand, and political fragmentation on the other. The findings reveal the different ways members of online neo-tribes made sense of campaign messages based on tribe, and what appears to be a generational shift in perception and articulation of tribe and tribalism, as well as some spatial elements to the shift. The findings also reveal the prevalence of neo-tribe members who have ethnic tribe affiliations to both Bemba/Nyanja and Tonga/Lozi groups, and how they made sense of tribal politics from their liminal space. The findings demonstrate the study’s three main theoretical postulations of the relationship between social media and elections, namely: social media as an extension of the digital public sphere, social media as a tool for political mobilisation, and social media as alternative media.