The impact of Social Media on National security in Zimbabwe

Abstract

The study assessed the impact of social media on national security in Zimbabwe. The descriptive case study design was employed to the sample of 90 respondents who were selected using the purposive and convenient sampling techniques. The convenient technique collected data from the 86 Information and Intelligence Operatives and the purposive sampling collected data from the 4 Heads of Information and Intelligence of the four security services. Therefore, the data was gathered using the primary and secondary methods were in-depth interviews and questionnaires were administered to the respondents. The thematic data analysis was used to find the security services views, opinions, knowledge, experiences and values and the data was presented using tables. The study target population of the study was the Zimbabwe Security Services officers as they are the custodians of national security. The study adopted the purposive and convenient sampling techniques where, the quota sampling technique was used to select respondents from each security service. The study concluded that the security services were not well financed and resourced enough by the government as there was no budget dedicated to internet national security matters. The study revealed that the use of social media in Zimbabwe increased largely on a positive note that brought about a multiplicity of positives such as bridging the global digital divide. Notwithstanding, the documented positives played by social media in the national security domain such as interaction amongst the communities and the timely dissemination of critical information and news to the generality of the population, social media resultant threats have been huge in facilitating violence, fake news, cybercrimes, hate speech and propaganda, political fantasy, child pornography and information warfare. Furthermore, social media has been also used to coordinate violence, theft, drug and human trafficking and small arms smuggling by criminal gangs impacting heavily on humanity. The study concludes that prevalent social media platforms in Zimbabwe were the Facebook, Twitter. Instagram, WhatsApp and YouTube in facilitating threats to national security. The shortage of skilled manpower, lack of enactment of relevant legal frameworks and effective management and monitoring have negatively impacted on the enforcement of the use and misuse of social media systems. Based on the findings of the study recommends that the government should support the security services in terms of social media dedicated budget. The government and security services should formulate conducive legal frameworks on policies and laws. The government should send law enforcement agents for special skills training in the field of Information Communication Technology. The enactment of the relevant legal frameworks and adoption of strategic communication management and monitoring systems were necessary to minimize and prevent threats of social media to national security. The security services needed futuristic capacity building in terms of dedicated budget and resources allocation towards skilled manpower training.