The power of social media

That FDC was confident of victory in presidential elections without grassroots infrastructure defies imagination. Besigye’s claims of electoral fraud have been greatly helped by the actions of the EC, the police, UCC and the inactions (or inadequate actions) of NRM and Museveni. I will return to how Besigye tricked the state and induced its institutions like the EC, UCC and the police to aid his narrative. But for now let me focus on the inactions (or inadequate actions) of Museveni and his NRM.

From the beginning of the campaign, the Museveni team failed to appreciate the communication revolution that has taken place in Uganda since the last elections. In 2011 when the last presidential election was held, there were 940,000 Internet subscribers in Uganda. By end of 2015, this number is estimated to have reached 7.1m driven largely by mobile Internet subscriptions that have grown by 700% from 850,000 in 2011 to 6.8 million by end of 2015.

As a result, Internet users have grown by 155% from 4.7 million about 12 million. Loosely translated, it means the addressable population for any communicator, marketer or election strategist, has grown. With a voter register of 15.3 million, Uganda is rapidly moving towards universal access to social media.

Now just think about this: an online population of 12 million people is greater than the population of Uganda’s 12 most populous districts (Wakiso, Kampala, Kibaale, Arua, Kasese, Mubende, Mukono, Hoima, Kabale, Tororo, Rakai and Iganga) who combined have a population of 10 million.

Secondly, the Uganda All Media Products Survey research released by Ipsos in 2013, on Internet usage shows that 66%Ugandans reported using the Internet (33% several times a day and additional 33% two to three times a week). In addition, 39% reported spending 1-3 hours on every visit, while 52% reported spending between 15 minutes to one hour on every visit. That was three years ago, a lot has since changed.

Ugandans are spending more time online. In the same study, 53% reported using the Internet mainly for emails, 50% on social media. Those aged 18-29 reported more social media activity than any other age group. In the study 85% reported Facebook being the most dominant social media platform used, 32%Google+ and 29% twitter. Whoever seeks to win the attention of this voter segment needs to learn online marketing. Hence management of online audiences has become a game changer for anyone seeking to sell a product, a candidate or an idea.

The 18-29 voters’ segment in urban and peri urban areas is one where Besigye has the strongest appeal.

This is why his supporters were able to take control of social media, a platform that allows multiplication and amplification of messages on unprecedented scale. Museveni supporters are largely the rural poor who participate less on social media and therefore contribute less to public discourse.

Social media allows people to built networks with virtual friends, form chat groups and attract audiences through which they can manufacture their own truth. To the prepared and/or passionate, social media allows one’s opponents to takeover his platforms and use them to their advantage.

For example, Museveni has the largest following on social media – both Twitter and Facebook. But this worked in favour of Besigye. How? Whenever Museveni posted something on his Facebook page, Besigye supporters would flood it like a swarm of bees posting criticism and grotesque insults of the president.

Museveni would have done himself better by closing down his social media. But solution. If you cannot brand yourself, your enemies will. If you close your Facebook page, your enemies will create a proxy one. As I write this article, Museveni’s pages are still dominated by content from his enemies.

Research shows that when you mix people with opposing ideas together in a forum, they tend to moderate each other. Hence most people move from their extreme views towards the center.

The reverse works when you put people with similar views into one forum. They tend to reinforce their biases and thereby moving many people to the extreme of their view. Social media has this effect. Most human beings visiting social media sites look for ideas that agree with their own.

Because social media creates virtual communities of like-minded people, it tends to reinforce shared views leading to radicalisation. We are seeing this process across Western Europe and NorthAmerica where the extremists on the right and left are the ones gaining ascendency – call it the “Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders Effect”.

This is forcing previously moderate politicians to dash to the extremes of their parties in order to remain relevant.

Today when someone posts on Twitter or Facebook a message critical of Besigye, his army of fanatics flood it with hundreds of accusations, labels and insults. This creates a feeling of mass support – but the comments will be by 100 angry people. Yet many Museveni supporters have withdrawn from social media feeling the world is against their man. Many others I meet have created proxy accounts in order to protect their real identity from being flooded with hundreds of impassioned insults and accusations.

Having chased Museveni supporters off social media, the Besigye machine created a virtual community of like-minded people who convinced themselves that they represented the whole of Uganda.

Every big Besigye rally would be posted on Facebook andWhatsapp and reproduced thousands of times, a factor that made it look like they were tens of thousands of rallies. This highly effective, self-organised campaign created an electoral psychology that Besigye had won the election even before balloting began.

NRM’s inability to stem the growth of this insurgency on social media was not due to poor appreciation of the danger but a paralysis in decision-making. Hardly anyone inside NRM understood how to respond to this challenge.

The President was advised in advance about the dangers of the opposition taking control of social media. But he found it difficult to make a quick and decisive decision because he was being bombarded with many solutions demanding money and he was unsure which was genuine.

Ultimately the Museveni campaign response was weak, the strategy adopted inadequate to meet the challenge, and the efforts scattered. Thus, Besigye’s supporters retained overwhelming control of social media.