Beyond free basics: Facebook, data bundles and Zambia’s social media internet

In the final article of a series looking at the role of digital technology and social media in Zambia’s recent elections, LSE’s Wendy Willems argues that mobile data bundles are crucial to the growing power of social media platforms in Zambia, increasingly creating a ‘social media internet’. They also pose a number of political challenges to mobile operators and governments on the continent. While calling features on Facebook and WhatsApp threaten the revenue base of mobile operators, the political affordances of social media have resulted in a number of government shutdowns recently.