How the anti-migrant 30 June campaign was disrupted by civil society groups

While divisive voices online whipped up mass hysteria with an unofficial deadline for undocumented foreigners to leave South Africa by 30 June, civil society groups and individual citizens responded by generating a social media storm to disrupt xenophobic narratives.

Counter X, a media amplification group run by Mobilize, was born from a 20-hour hackathon on 27 June, hosted by the Campaign on Digital Ethics, Moxii Africa, the Campaign for Free Expression, the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation and Justice, and the Activism Hub.

“Our voices are being drowned out by a loud, organised campaign of fear — and a lot of it isn’t even real people. It’s bots, built to make hate look bigger than it is,” Counter X states on its web page.

Partnering with anti-xenophobia groups that included Siyafana Sonke (We Are All the Same), Counter X attracted roughly 800 participants who donated their time and social media access for a cause they believed in. In addition to the coordinated media amplification campaign, many activists and civil society groups used their voices and influence individually on social media to counter narratives circulating about South Africans and migrants.

A social media storm leverages the scale and algorithms of platforms to place content on the newsfeed, homefeed or “for you” page of platform users. It works in much the same way that a standard amplification campaign works. However, there is more transparency and no financial benefit for participants.

Explaining the distinction between bot farms and the work of Counter X, David ­Lydall and Khanya Peacock from Mobilize said it was like a rent-a-crowd versus authentic mobilisation. About 800 volunteers self-organised to counter rising tensions that had been triggered by the 30 June deadline campaign, which appears to have been escalated amid considerable financial backing.

Peacock and Lydall see this first counter-xenophobia movement as a seeding round to help more volunteers find a space to get involved, both online and on the ground. It appealed to South Africans who were angered at the rise in hostility and hate towards African foreigners and wanted to help to set the record straight and build bridges, but were unsure about how to get involved.

Another key difference between the efforts of a countercampaign like the social media storm and campaigns that are amplified through paid influencer networks is that participants in a storm have the autonomy to amplify the content with which they align. People are not paid for the number of likes, comments and posts that they generate, so there is no need or financial incentive to compromise their beliefs by amplifying messages that contain content they might not support.

In the opaque paid influencer space, people forgo their beliefs and political alignment to monetise the social media marketing machinery.

When researchers at Murmur Intelligence, which has been analysing the South African political discourse for years, noticed a countercampaign developing, they tracked the metrics of the anti-foreigner and anti-xenophobic campaigns.

Explicit countercampaign terms such as #wontbemarching, #30June-Deadline and #NoToHate were used, as well as march mobilisation terms like Abahambe, March and March and Operation Dudula to track the online campaigns.

Over 48 hours, they found that the combined efforts of the countercampaign performed just shy of 10% of the march campaign in terms of unique authors. Considering the lucrative online influence that has been driving the march campaign and the timeframe for mobilising the countercampaign, this figure highlights the potential for disruption by self-organising structures.

Murmur’s Aldu Cornelissen said the march campaign was more efficient per author as each author had an 18% higher reach and 19% higher impressions. This suggests the march campaign had more posting intensity per contributor. But the countercampaign was more efficient per post: about 51% higher reach and 49% higher impressions.

Counter X plans to continue mobilising citizens who wish to hold the government to account and level the toxic playing field online. The hackathon demonstrated that campaigns can be driven without a bureaucratic impediment. DM

Yossabel Chetty is a researcher at the Centre for Information Integrity in Africa (CINIA).