Fake News as Political Communication: On Fake News, Digital Media and the Struggle for Hegemony in Post-Mugabe Zimbabwe

• Published date: 01 December 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129241262230
• Author: Albert Chibuwe
• Date: 01 December 2024

Article

Political Research Quarterly

2024, Vol. 77(4) 1181–1195

© The Author(s) 2024

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129241262230

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Fake News as Political Communication: On

Fake News, Digital Media and the Struggle

for Hegemony in Post-Mugabe Zimbabwe

Albert Chibuwe

1



Abstract

Fake news has long been used in propaganda, but the proliferation of digital media reinvigorated it. In Zimbabwe, fake

news peaks during elections and on the eve of international summits the country’s leadership will be attending.The ruling

Zimbabwe African National Union –Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and the main opposition Movement for Democratic

Change Alliance (MDC-A), which re-branded to Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC), deploy fake news against each

other. These two are the main contestants for power, and they dominate Parliament and Senate. ZANU-PF has the

majority in the legislature whilst the opposition CCC dominates Urban Councils. They are permanently engagedin a

battle for hegemony. Informed by the three dimensions of fake news as a genre, a label and dramaturgia, the paper

interrogates how, when, where and why ZANU-PF and MDC-A deployed fake news in the post-Mugabe era. Data were

gathered through archival research and virtual ethnography, and the f‌indings show that both parties used the three

dimensions of fake news in intra-party and inter-party struggles, and the battle to inf‌luence regional and global public

opinion. Fake news was used to confuse the public and discredit the opponent.

Keywords

fake news, Zimbabwe, disinformation, political communication, dramaturgia

Introduction

(Political) communication is central in the struggle for

hegemony (see Chibuwe, 2016

1

) or rule by consent

(Strinati, 1997)

2

. It is a key feature of political processes

such as democracy and electoral politics (Maarek and

Wolfsfeld, 2003,1

3

) which have always provided a need

for promotional communication or political communi-

cation (Kaid, 2012)

4

. It is also deployed by dictators to

spruce up their images or to sustain a façade of democracy

(see Menon, 2008)

5

and ‘combatants struggling for in-

ternational attention and sympathy…’ (Maarek and

Wolfsfeld, 2003)

6

. Political communication is the pro-

duction and distribution of political messages by creators

targeting a specif‌ic audience (Graber, 2005)

7

. Fake of

news and/or disinformation can be political in nature and

media, including social media, play a crucial role in the

distribution of such political messages. It was therefore

inevitable that the advent of digital media technologies

would have a profound effect on political communication

(Maarek and Wolfsfeld, 2003,1

8

). In Zimbabwe social

media, especially X has become a key platform for

political battles between the opposition and ZANU-PF

(Chibuwe, 2020)

9

. The President’s clarion call to ZANU-

PF youths to engage and thrash the opposition on social

media (see Chibuwe, 2020)

10

arguably accelerated the

production and distribution of political communication

including fake news and/or disinformation (see Ncube,

2019;Chibuwe, 2020)

11

. Besides the president’s call, the

advent of digital media has, in Zimbabwe as elsewhere,

reinvigorated fake news and/or disinformation (Moyo,

Mare and Mabweazara, 2020)

12

as political communi-

cation. Fake news is largely associated and enabled by the

proliferation of digital media (see Allcott and Gentzkow,

2017;Munoriyarwa and Chambwera, 2020)

13

. However,

fake news pre-date digital media. Propaganda, a con-

ceptual relative of fake news, was widely used to

1

Midlands State University Faculty of Social Sciences, Gweru, Zimbabwe

Corresponding Author:

Albert Chibuwe, Midlands State University Faculty of Arts and

Humanities, Zvishavane Campus, P.O. Box 100, Zvishavane, Zimbabwe.

Email: albertchibuwe@yahoo.co.uk