Politically-Coordinated Social Movements or Hashtag Campaigns? A Discourse Analysis of Online Anti-Immigrant Tweets in South Africa

Abstract

The recent emergence of online anti-immigrant sentiment on Twitter in South Africa has been interrogated by a few research organizations to determine the extent to which digitally-mediated spaces are being increasingly leveraged by various social and political actors to further stimulate widespread anti-immigrant propaganda about African migrants and refugees residing in South Africa. This research study determines and analyzes whether online anti-immigrant contestations on Twitter in South Africa are a new model of collective protest action either building on or superseding the orthodox characteristics of social movements. In doing so, it conducts a discourse analysis to understand how social media-driven forms of collective action, contestation, and/or protests are coordinated and mobilized through the powerful discursive use of language on Twitter. The study’s primary theoretical framework, the ‘Social Constructivist Paradigm’ and ‘Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)’, forms a crucial aspect of understanding how widespread feelings of frustration and disillusionment among the majority of marginalized South Africans are channelled through various Twitter posts and interactions to continue legitimizing a growing anti-immigrant populist discourse. The methodology of the study followed a mixed-methods research approach using the filtering and querying features of a free cloud-based research software tool called COSMOS (Collaborative Online Social Media Observatory Software), to collect and analyze data on Twitter. The findings of this study were analyzed using content and statistical analyses. The study found that the hashtags used to spread online anti-immigrant discourse in South Africa, particularly, #PutSouthAfricansFirst, #OperationDudula, and #ForeignersMustGo, can be conceptualized as ‘hashtag campaigns’ that are a microcosm of larger politically-coordinated offline anti-immigrant social movements in South Africa. These findings demonstrate how the discursive coordination of language into the virulent anti-immigrant discourse on Twitter draws on various conventional attributes of ‘social movements’ to constitute a novel model of online collective action. Indeed, an emerging model of online collective formations mobilized by various politically-connected groups of people with shared anti-immigrant beliefs and identities that further seek to deepen already fractured relations between South African citizens and African foreigners.