Heather Ford

The rise of networked technology and social media in particular begs investigation of the implications of using Twitter as a political tool for improving listening by governments. Can it improve governmental responsiveness and government-citizen conversation in the face of public disaffection in representative democracies around the world, and how? Listening is often employed by governments as a rhetorical exercise undertaken for instrumental reasons to boost popularity when it is at a low ebb. Such disingenuous claims to listening risk dismissal and derision by increasingly cynical publics that are repeatedly subjected to governments’ misleading gestures. The question is therefore not only whether anybody is listening but also, ‘how are they listening?’ We argue that good listening constitutes an authentic representative claim (Saward, 2006) that goes beyond a procedural approach to democracy in which listening is restricted to a set of formal procedures. Good listening involves ‘listening to’, as well as ‘listening out for’, new and unexpected voices and issues on an ongoing basis and valuing the listening exercise as part of the democratic process in and of itself (Dobson, 2014).

In this paper we investigate the tension between growing voter disaffection at elections, the rising cacophony of political voices on social media, and governments’ claims to listen – sincerely or instrumentally – on social media. To do so we analyse the run-up to the South African State of the Nation Address (SONA) 2015 as a case of an online listening exercise conducted by the South African Presidency in response to increased public tension in the country’s democratic politics. As a case of a transitional democracy, the danger for South Africa is to become an ‘illiberal’ democracy, performing the rituals of a procedural democracy without their substance (Giliomee et al, 2001). We therefore ask whether the Presidency’s online listening exercise is just such an empty performance of the rituals of procedural democracy, or whether it constitutes a deliberative engagement in listening. We further consider what role Twitter plays in this exercise, and whether it has the potential to realise good listening practice.

We employ a mixed methods approach to Twitter analysis that integrates hashtag analysis with the qualitative following of key actors and interpretive analysis of their posts. We consider Twitter posts not in isolation but rather as part of the wider media ecology and as responses to, and part of a conversation with, offline events.

This chapter is forthcoming in Voltmer, K.  et al.(Ed.). 2018. Media and Communication in Transitional Societies: Concepts, Conflicts, Cases.