Drawing on research during the 2011 and 2016 Zambian elections, this presentation proposes a material, mobile and spatial approach to political communication, popular culture and civic engagement. This is not equivalent to dismissing the importance of ‘the digital’ but instead demonstrates the continuum and articulation between digital and physical spaces which mutually enforce and constitute each other.
Problematising the polarized debate on the role of digital media during the Arab Spring, my paper demonstrates (1) the convergence between popular culture and political communication; and (2) how political communication is practiced both within physical spaces and at the intersection of the online and offline, frequently shaped by similar logics of visuality and visibility.