ABSTRACT
South African activists became frontline workers when the COVID-19 pandemic struck the country. Based on the limitations that the pandemic imposed on traditional organising methods, digital activism became more prominent, replacing the physical meetings on which conventional activism heavily relies. This chapter explores the communication repertoires of the Community Organising Working Group (COWG), a social movement that emerged from the C-19 People’s Coalition, formed to ensure that the principles of social justice prevailed as the COVID-19 pandemic spread across South Africa. It consisted mostly of working-class activists from diverse backgrounds and gender identities in Johannesburg townships. While avoiding the one-medium bias, this chapter investigates how movement activists adopted two digital platforms, WhatsApp and Zoom, and incorporated them into their existing communication repertoires. Through “netnography” and face-to-face interviews, the paper examines how social movements operate within a broader media spectrum: firstly, by exploring how the COVID-19 pandemic shifted the communicative practices of movements and, secondly, by examining the innovative ways whereby activists adopted, navigated, and integrated newer media into their communications despite the issues brought about by the digital divide.
