Conversations on social media platforms are justifying and perpetuating real-world mob justice. Governments must respond quickly, while respecting users’ freedom of expression, writes Maame Efua Addadzi-Koom.

Mob justice is endemic in parts of Africa. In South Africa, at least 1,202 reported killings between 2019 and 2022 were linked to mob justice. In 2021, mob justice claimed 746 lives in Uganda. Between 2019 and 2022, Nigeria recorded 391 killings due to mob actions.  

As an extension of the mob on the street, social media users can trigger and enable mob justice. There are five main categories of justification used on social media to vindicate mob justice.

Slow or failed criminal justice systems

Perceptions of slow or failed criminal justice systems are the most popular justification for mob justice on X (formerly Twitter). Members of the public often claim the police say the cells are full when suspected criminals are brought to them and then collect bribes to release arrested persons.

An alarming level of distrust in the police is exhibited in these tweets. One person tweeted that they would rather throw themselves off a cliff than “condemn” the mob who are providing “real justice”.

The fact that many consider mob justice as ‘real justice’ and the only way to fix their country is disconcerting. The various governments and criminal justice institutions need to work together to eradicate corruption and increase the efficiency of their processes to win back public trust.

One tweeter rightly commented that we will see a drastic drop in mob justice when their government properly addresses police corruption.

Normative discourses

It is common to see normative tweets that celebrate videos showing mob actions as a “very good” way to eliminate crime in society or supported mobs “vent[ing] their spleen”’ on suspected criminals. These discourses drew their legitimacy from notions of retributive justice, with some asserting that “you kill, you must be killed”, and the “wages of sin is death”. The latter is a Bible verse meant to imply that the payment for sin (criminal activity) is death by the mob.

These normative statements justify mob justice as a necessary means of punishing criminal behaviour and sanitising the society of wrongdoing. This justification strikes at people’s perception of appropriate justice and helps diminish any internal checks that hold people back from participating in mob actions.

Exception discourses

Another class of discourses justified mob justice in exceptional cases where heinous crimes were allegedly committed. Rape, paedophilia, and human trafficking were some examples of offences considered grievous enough in the digital court of public opinion to be responded to with mob violence.

Rape stood out, with several tweeters saying that rapists “rightfully deserve” mob justice. Apart from the gravity of the offence, gender was another ground for the exception. Based on conversations on X, men face a greater intensity of mob violence than women. Comments on videos where women were being beaten also attract a significant amount of sympathy.

The harm with exception discourse justifications is that it tends to absolve the mob participants from guilt. It labels mob justice as a benign form of cleansing for only grievous crimes without any consensus as to what is grievous and what is not. It makes a failed attempt to attribute a moral obligation on society to punish certain wrongs and the manner that it does so is less important than the punishment being severe.

Culture of violence discourses

The fourth justification for mob justice was that it reflected the culture of violence that already exists in a society. In Nigeria, for example, some attributed this culture of violence to particular ethnic groups. Others traced it to the tertiary institutions where it is instilled in students through the practice of ‘maximum shishi’ where student transgressions are punished through beatings by their peers.

Justifying mob justice as a consequence of a society’s culture of violence could potentially drive people to internalise, become possessive of and eventually mete out violence through mob action when the opportunity presents itself.

Banter discourses

Finally, some discourses on mob justice were captured with humour. Sometimes, non-mob justice-related banter between friends on X can veer into mob justice threats. One tweeter told his fellow tweeter that “you deserve mob justice too” over a light-hearted disagreement over who was the best musician.

Other times, comments on videos showing a mob in action included banter. For example, a comment (with pun intended) on a video showing a suspect being set ablaze stated that the suspect lived in “hell”, “died by fire”, and is going to “hell fire”. Such banter waters down the heinous activities of mob actions and the guilt participants may feel. Banter also becomes a cognitive prompt to win support for mob justice.

While there are other minor justifications these five stood out in unpacking the mob mentality on X. Given that these social media justifications can fuel real-life mob justice, African countries must enact cyber-related laws to address the various social media manifestations of mob justice to curb it by finding the appropriate balance between respecting users’ freedom of expression and censorship.

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