Defying Uganda’s morality police: the grammar of social media protest images

Abstract

This study examines the social media movement protesting Uganda’s 2014 Anti-Pornography Act (APA) designed to regulate women’s attire. The legislation fueled mob attacks on women wearing miniskirts in public, sparking public protests documented with images of demonstrators bearing placards voicing their dissent. Unlike the traditional public sphere where gatekeeping remains pervasive and entrenched, social media’s loosely regulated platforms give interested users unabated access to issues and the public. Images, text, and hashtags play a vital role in conveying grievances. Through critical discourse analysis (CDA) relevant to communication through images, findings reveal how the circulation of protest images online shapes public opinion and legislative outcomes on contested issues such as sex, morality, and women’s rights. The images operationalize a visual grammar of resistance that negotiates and contests the meaning of women’s bodies in defiance of the repressive government.