Digital Youth and Social Movements (Perspectives from Nigeria) is an incisive and significant book that engages the reader in a survey of three significant hashtags and social movements in Nigeria's digital history - #OccupyNigeria (2012), #EndSARS (2020) and #Obidient (2023). Essentially different from each other, but with a major commonality: they were all digitally-mediated youth movements. This book curates the generational differences among these protest movements. It presents an opportunity to reflect on how the promises of technology have been fulfilled but also how they have been thwarted by anti-democratic actors in Africa.
Egbunike's Digital Youth and Social Movements (Perspectives from Nigeria) illuminate pathways to the efficacy and sustainability of social movements and their agenda. It is, therefore, a valuable source of insights and direction for movement builders and online activists - whether they are promoting political, social, environmental or other social justice causes - to navigate some of the perils that undermine digital technology's contribution to building inclusive, cohesive, and democratic societies in Africa.
- Wairagala Wakabi, PhD. Executive Director, CIPESA (Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa), Uganda
In addition to his 2018 book - Hashtags: social media, politics and ethnicity in Nigeria, Nwachukwu Egbunike has also published several scholarly essays on the intersections of social media and social movements in a Global South context. His new book, Digital Youth and Social Movements (Perspectives from Nigeria), builds on this solid scholarship, establishing him as a powerful voice on the subject of digital media, youth culture, and civic engagement in Nigeria.
- James Yk, PhD. Assistant Professor of African Digital Humanities, University of Kansas