Cultural Identity and
New Communication
Technologies:
Political, Ethnic and Ideological
Implications
D. Ndirangu Wachanga
University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, USA
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cultural identity and new communication technologies : political, ethnic and
ideological implications / D. Ndirangu Wachanga, editor.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-60960-591-9 (hbk.) -- ISBN 978-1-60960-592-6 (ebook) 1.
Information technology--Social aspects--Africa. 2. Information technology-Political aspects--Africa. 3. Telecommunication--Social aspects--Africa. 4.
Telecommunication--Political aspects--Africa. I. Wachanga, D. Ndirangu, 1975HN780.Z9I5639 2011
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40
Chapter 3
New Media in Kenya:
Putting Ethnicity in Perspective
Martin C. Njoroge
Kenyatta University, Kenya
Purity Kimani
Kenyatta University, Kenya
Bernard J. Kikech
Kenyatta University, Kenya
ABSTRACT
The way the media processes, frames, and passes on information either to the government or to the people
affects the function of the political system. This chapter discusses the interaction between new media
and ethnicity in Kenya, Africa. The chapter investigates ways in which the new media reinforced issues
relating to ethnicity prior to Kenya’s 2007 presidential election. In demonstrating the nexus between
new media and ethnicity, the chapter argues that the upsurge of ethnic animosity was chiely instigated
by new media’s inluence. Prior to the election, politicians had mobilized their supporters along ethnic
lines, and created a tinderbox situation. Thus, there is need for the new media in Kenya to help the citizens to redeine the status of ethnic relationships through the recognition of ethnic differences and the
re-discovery of equitable ways to accommodate them; after all, there is more strength than weaknesses
in these differences.
1. INTRODUCTION
The recent shift from traditional media to new
media may not, on its own account, cause instant
ripples in the media industry. However, to ignore
this as a normal takeover would be to misread
what is in no doubt a move indicative of more
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60960-591-9.ch003
fundamental shifts in media. Digital technology
such as Mobile phones and the Internet have simply
not been around long enough in Kenya, Africa.
However, incidents like the 2007-2008 crises in
Kenya provide a flash of insight into the emerging
power of these tools. It also puts into sharp focus
the power new media technologies give citizens
of developing nations to report news and organize responses to crisis situations. While Kenyan
Copyright © 2011, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
New Media in Kenya
journalists and community organizers have a great
deal to be proud of in their response to an electoral
crisis and the concomitant ethnic violence, new
media was also used both by the government
and civilians to amplify tensions and coordinate
violent attacks (see Goldstein and Rotich, 2008).
Significantly, the ease in communication and
dissemination of information provided by these
digitally networked technologies is vital as digital
tools can help promote transparency. Research
findings reveal that new media commands 48
percent of the audience share dwarfing the old
media (Synovate, 2009 cited in Ogola, 2009).
The term ‘new media’ is used in this chapter
to mean the emergence of digital, computerized
or networked information and communication
technologies in the latter part of the 20th century.
New media often have the characteristic of being
manipulatable, networkable, dense, compressible
and interactive.
The chapter identifies the specific ways in
which new media contributed to negative ethnicity and particular emphasis is given to the role of
the social media such as the internet and mobile
computing which enables what Bayne (2008)
refers to as ‘different kinds of communication’
than their analog antecedents. Bayne (2008: 43)
writes, ‘the first element is the shift from a huband-spoke architecture with unidirectional links
to the end points in the mass media, to distributed
architecture with multidirectional connections
among all nodes in the networked information environment. The second is the practical elimination
of communications costs as a barrier to speaking
across associational boundaries.’ In other words,
digital technologies are tools that, in addition to
allowing communication in the traditional oneto-one fashion, also allow us to become our own
broadcasters and reach large numbers of people in
unprecedented ways at trivial cost. Viewed through
this lens, actual activities of the new media and
ethnicity prior, during and after the election violence witnessed in Kenya are alluded to. Among
the questions investigated are: what was the impact
of digital technology on ethnicity prior to, during
and after the 2007/2008 post election violence in
the Kenyan context? To what extent did the new
media contribute to fanning ethnicity in Kenya?
What was the impact of this digital technology on
ethnicity? The chapter also gives a theoretical and
conceptual treatment of new media and ethnicity.
The chapter rests on the premise that while digital
tools can help promote and strengthen ethnicity,
they can also increase the ease of promoting hate
speech and ethnic divisions. It is also the argument of this chapter that access to new media in
Kenya is critical. As our analysis shows, social
media can be an alternative medium for citizen
communication or participatory journalism.
2. RATIONALE OF THE STUDY
Recently in Kenya, there has been a massive
expansion of Internet infrastructure and a mushrooming of digital technologies, all geared towards informing, entertaining and educating the
citizenry. Mobile phones, the Internet and other
digital avenues constitute an important outreach
agent through which the public is sensitized on
issues such as ethnicity, negative ethnicity and
political ideologies. The numerous reports by
national and international organizations that
document the threatening atmosphere and ethnic
violence before, during, and after the 2007 election
all mention new media having fanned the flames
of ethnic hatred, and the role of hate speech as a
feature of the conflict (see Bayne 2008; European
Union (EU) 2008; Kenya National Commission
of Human Rights (KNCHR) 2007- 2008). The
distressing conclusion of many of the reports is
that some instances of ethnic based violent behavior were likely motivated by encounters with
hate speech in the form of text messages, e-mails
and blogs (new media). Many people relied on
such information that was transmitted by these
digital devices and often acted according to their
interpretation of the same (KNHCR, 2008: 18).
41
New Media in Kenya
It is, therefore, imperative that any information
transmitted through this media should be accurate,
moderate, adequate and comprehensible. It is thus
of essence to examine claims made that blogs, emails, mobile telephony and text messages were
used to inflame tension and incite ethnic hatred.
The speed with which Kenyans turned to digital
technology prior to, during and in the aftermath
of the 2007 elections is proof that new media
(the Internet, mobile telephony and blogs) are
increasingly shaping the ways in which crises
play out in the developing world. However, the
double-edged sword of technology extends beyond
crisis situations. It is against this background that
this chapter attempts to provide a rapid and succinct analysis of what happened in Kenya prior
to, during and after the 2007 elections using the
lens of new media devices as discussed later in the
chapter, (see section 13) the 2007 election fiasco
exposed the deliberate stoking of ethnic tension
and animosity by new media, power-hungry elites,
feeble democratic traditions and institutions in
Kenya. This state of affairs threatened to consume
the citizenry. The chapter strives to place the new
media in Kenya under scrutiny by analyzing its role
in the 2007 post-election violence and eventually
suggesting the way forward.
Human Rights Commission (KNHRC) all report
that the new media fanned tribal animosity and
hatred. It is from this perspective that this chapter
seeks to examine and analyze how the new media
supposedly fuelled ethnic animosity leading to
inter-ethnic wars. Using the lens of the 2007-2008
Kenyan presidential election crisis, this chapter
illustrates how digitally networked technologies,
specifically mobile phones and the Internet, were
a catalyst to both ‘predatory behavior’, where
behavior is driven by cynical, opportunistic and
often violent norms such as ethnic-based mob
violence and to ‘civic behavior’ where behavior
is driven by the norms of toleration, accountability and equality such as citizen journalism. In
particular, this chapter focuses on the significant
ways that Kenyans used new media technology
to coordinate action: Short Messaging Services
(SMS) campaigns to promote and counter ethnic
violence; blogs to challenge mainstream media
narratives and online campaigns to promote awareness and transparency. It is argued that Kenyan
politicians and new media resorted to the use of
negative ethnicity to undermine the state through
the exploitation of its most vulnerable fault-line
ethnicity which exploded soon after the 2007 election leading to Kenyans butchering one another.
3. STATEMENT OF ISSUE
4. KENYA AT A GLIMPSE
Kenya, being a multi-ethnic country, has witnessed
inter-ethnic conflicts experienced especially during the general elections carried out after every
five years as witnessed in 1992, 1997, 2002 and
the worst one being in 2007/2008 after the disputed
presidential election. New media was mentioned
in various post election commission reports as
having contributed in instigating violence. For
example, the Commission of Inquiry into PostElection Violence (CIPEV) popularly known
as the Waki Commission, Non-Governmental
Organizations (NGO) such as Minority Rights
Group International (MRG) and Kenya National
Kenya’s official name is ‘The Republic of Kenya’
which is a country in East Africa. The country is
named after Mount Kenya, a significant landmark
and the second highest mountain peak in Africa.
The area covered by Kenya is 582,646 square kilometers. The population has grown rapidly in recent
decades to nearly 40 million although a census
conducted in 2009 has not been released for public
use. However, sources indicate that it may portray
a significant shift in the demographic shares of
the different ethnic groups. Kenya achieved its
independence in 1963 from Britain. It has now
had three presidents. The capital city is Nairobi.
42
New Media in Kenya
According to the 1999 population census about
97% of Kenya’s people are Africans. In 2006, the
World Bank estimated Kenya’s literacy at 73.6%,
with male literacy at 77.7% and female literacy at
70.2%. On religious matters the Kenyan population consists of protestant 45%, Roman Catholic
33%, indigenous beliefs 10%, Muslim 10%, and
other religions 2% (1999, Census Report).
Politically, the country is a presidential representative democratic republic, whereby the
President is both the head of state and head of
Government, and of a multi-party system of
government. Although ethnic violence has been
a recurring ingredient of Kenya’s general elections’ process since 1963, the cutthroat nature
of the competition for the presidency in 2007
propelled Kenya towards inter-tribal violence.
The mega-ethnicity that was witnessed in 2007
was of a larger scale than had been evident in the
previous elections. Kibaki’s Party of National
Unity (PNU) went beyond the horizons of the
Gikuyu, Embu and Meru Association (GEMA) to
incorporate parties that represented a grand-mega
ethnic constituency in Kenya. Thus PNU had in its
ranks the following political parties: Democratic
Party of Kenya (DP) (with a strong base around
the Gikuyu, Embu, Meru Association [GEMA]
communities), NARC-Kenya (NARC-K) (mainly
constituting the support of GEMA communities
and from Mijikenda communities from the Coast
and a few other ethnic groups from other regions),
FORD-Kenya (FORD-K) (that was mainly made
up of Bukusu sub-group of the Luhya of Western
Kenya). On the other hand, Raila Odinga’s Orange
Democratic Movement (ODM), which was the
main opposition party, was mainly made up of
the Luo, the Kalenjin, and a number of other subgroups of the Luhya, apart from the Bukusu, and
other ethnic groups from the rest of the country
as those from the Coast and like-minded groups
from North Eastern Province.
Prior to the 2007 elections opinion polls predicted a close contest between the two main parties
namely: PNU and ODM (Steadman, 2007). The
ODM party leader is from the Luo community,
while the PNU party leader who has been in power
for two terms is from the Kikuyu community. In
Kenya executive power is exercised by the government and is vested on both the government and the
national assembly. The judiciary is independent
of the executive and the legislature. However,
there was a growing concern especially during
the last year of the first tenure of Mwai Kibaki
that the executive was increasingly meddling in
the affairs of the judiciary by appointing judges
without consultation. Prior to the 2007 election,
Kenya had maintained remarkable political stability despite changes in its political system and
had not experienced political crises common in
neighboring countries such as Somali and Sudan.
5. ETHNICITY AND ETHNIC
GROUPINGS IN KENYA - A
BANE OR A BLESSING?
Our knowledge on the various Kenyan ethnic
communities in the pre-colonial and post-colonial
period has been enriched by a multiplicity of
sources, including oral traditions, archaeology,
historical linguistic and cultural anthropology.
Pioneer scholars, including Ogot (1967), Were
(1967), Muriuki (1977), Ochieng (1974), Mwanzi
(1977), Aseka (1989) among many others (cited
in Onyango, 2008) have enriched our historical
knowledge on individual ethnic communities that
occupy present Kenya.
Their studies have emphasized the fact that
the present day Kenya was already an ethnically
complex region characterized by varied communal
interactions by 1500 AD (Mwanzi, 1977). These
interactions were constantly altering the social,
economic and political entities of the communities in the region. Through the historical process
of encounter and interaction, there were evolving
ethnic communities that were neither definitive nor
pure but hybridized in nature (Ochieng’, 1974:44).
This process of interaction was underway with
43
New Media in Kenya
the arrival of colonialists. What perhaps needs
to be emphasized from the contributions of the
pioneer historical studies is that, first, the evolutionary process in Kenya pre-dates the histories
of the present day inhabitants. Secondly, that the
ethnic composition of the present country Kenya
is as a result of a crystallization of many centuries
of interaction between the various peoples and
ethnic groups.
According to the 1999 population census, the
country has about 43 ethnic groups and each group
has its own language and culture that defines it.
The country is divided into three major linguistic
groups. The largest being the Bantu, followed
by Nilotes and the smallest group comprise the
Cushites. The ethnic languages of Kenya feature
prominently at the national level and each is
important to the individual or community at the
interpersonal and intrapersonal levels of communication and more so as a marker of ethnic
identity. Ethnic languages symbolize an in-group
identity for the users. This ethnic distinctiveness
has sometimes led to clashes among ethnic groups.
The major ethnic groups in Kenya include:
Kikuyu (Agĩkũyũ) 20.78%; Luhya (Bakhayo,
Banyala, Banyore, Bukusu, Idakho, Isukha,
Kabras, Kisa, Marachi, Maragoli, Marama, Samia,
Tachoni, Tiriki, Wanga) 14.38%; Luo 12.38%;
Kalenjin (Kipsigis, Marakwet, Nandi, Pokot,
Sabaots, Sengwer, Terek, Turgen) 13.46%; Kamba
11.42%; Kisii 6.15%; Ameru (Achuka, Aigembe,
Aimenti, Amuthambi, Amwimbi, Atharaka, Atigania) 5.07%; Maasai 1.76%; Turkana 1.52%; Embu
1.20%; Taita 0.95%; Swahili 0.60%; Samburu
0.50%; Somali 2.29% (1999, Census report). The
percentage indicates the ethnic group’s proportion
of the population of Kenya. The country also
has minority ethnic groups which include: the
Aweer, Bajuni, Kore, Kuria, Miji Kenda, Ogiek,
Orma, Pokomo, Rendille, Sengwer, Suba, Taveta,
Watha, Yiaku, Dorobo, Elmolo, Malakote and
Sanye. Ethnic minorities here are distinguished
by the small size of their populations. Other nonKenyan ethnic groups resident in Kenya for many
44
generations are: Gujaratis, Baluchs, Punjabis and
Goans from India, Britons, Hadhrami and Omani
Arabs and Italians, plus a number of Africans who
have become citizens of Kenya (see Makoloo and
Ghai, 2008).
In the latest national population and housing
census of 2009 though (not officially released),
the government put forth a policy of not providing
information on the ethnic breakdown of the peoples
of Kenya. Instead it opts to provide information
disaggregated by age, districts and gender. This
action of the government, according to a Senior
Demographic Officer with the Ministry of Planning and National Development, was due to the
experience of the 1989 census. He stated that:
It was discovered that the ethnic figures were hijacked, abused and used for the wrong purposes
mainly for political propaganda. This is why
you found that in some cases senior politicians
claimed that the figures of their communities had
been doctored. This raised unnecessary tensions.
The result of this, which is the other reason for
the new decision, is that the debate having been
taken over by politicians the main issues for which
a census is done [sic] were not addressed in the
national debate.1
According to this officer, the figures on ethnicity were collected but not processed for the
reasons stated. The same might be the reason why
the 2009 population and housing census results
have not been officially released.
Ethnicity is, therefore, as old as humankind.
People in every part of our modern world, just as
in ancient times, belong to some kind of ethnic
or tribal grouping that reinforces their sense of
belonging, nationalism, patriotism, social values,
political progress, and development. The languages we speak, the customs and traditions we
cherish, the food we crave for, and the clothing
we adorn all have some linkages to our ethnicities,
whether as Blacks, Europeans, Asians, Icelanders,
(Kukubor, 2006) or even as Kenyans. In this way,
New Media in Kenya
ethnicity reinforces our very beings as persons
and nations in charting our destinies in this world
in regard to national unity and progress. This is
the good news.
Ethnicity should not be a hindrance to national
unity and progress, or the source of the continuing
ethnic violence and political instability in Kenya
unless Kenyans, out of misguided individual egos
used ethnicity for mischief, bordering on corruption, mismanagement, and greed for power. We do
not categorically state that ethnicity was the cause
of the 2007 post election violence. However, the
bad news is that ethnicity was a resource in the
hands of frivolous ‘political entrepreneurs’ who,
because of corruption, mismanagement, and greed
for power, manipulated ethnicity and used it to
achieve their personal political agenda (Onyango,
2008). In the real world, as we know from either
personal experience or through the media, cultural misunderstanding, ethnic conflict, prejudice,
xenophobia, ethnocentrism, anti-Semitism and
racism frequently characterize relations between
groups that are somewhat different from each other
(Bayne, 2008). This is especially the case when
one group holds more power, has more privileges
or more resources than the others and uses the difference (language or ethnicity) as a legitimation
to dominate or marginalize others. Bayne (Ibid)
indicates that many African nations have ignored
the ethnic nature of their societies and chosen to
pretend that the ethnic groups do not exist and
have stubbornly refused to build their houses on
the strong rudiments of ethnicity. This may sound
rather perverse because it has always been argued
that our strength lies in unity and that ethnicity is
the bane of our nation.
This brings us immediately to the difference
between ethnicity and ethnocentrism. Ethnicity
is a noun from a Greek word ‘ethnikos’ meaning ‘heathen’, implicitly meaning the origin of a
person. Ethnicity is the fact of the ethnic group. It
poses no danger to the nation. Ethnocentrism on
the other hand, is the danger; it is the misuse of the
ethnic group, of ethnic sentiments against other
ethnic groups (Cheeseman 2008; Yieke 2008).
Ethnocentrism may refer to any action or attitude,
conscious or unconscious, which subordinates an
individual or a group based on origin (language,
ethnic origin and culture). This action can be enacted individually or institutionally. This attitude
or behavior is based on one’s extreme viewpoint or
loyalty to a tribe/ethnic or social group, ignorance,
excessive pride in one’s ethnicity, and/or intent to
suppress and dominate others. Ethnocentrism is
what Kenyans have been referring to as negative
ethnicity (Wa Wamwere 2008). The way we see
it then is that, ethnocentrism can be combated,
whereas ethnicity is permanent. Wa Wamwere
further notes that one can be ethnocentric, regardless of one’s religion, intelligence, social status
and benevolence.
The concept of ‘Tribe’ was a derogatory term
developed in the 19th century by racist western
scholars, and journalists to designate alien ‘nonwhite’ people as inferior or less civilized, and as
having not yet evolved from a primal state. A lot
of times, tribalism and ethnocentrism have been
used interchangeably to convey the same thoughts
and opinions (Yieke, 2008).
Tribal and ethnic issues are so fundamental
in Kenyan society that they seem almost an
integral component. These issues seem to have
come up even more clearly in the run-up to the
2007 general election. And even though we know
that tribalism has always been there, the level to
which the Kenyan community had fallen prey to
tribalism was and is still amazing. It is becoming
a common phenomenon for some myopic thinking
Kenyans to behave as if ethnic differences produce
inherent superiority in people of some specific
ethnic groups. In fact, such individuals respond
to other Kenyans differently merely because of
ethnic backgrounds. Individual tribalism occurs
in our day-to-day activities at informal levels.
This tendency is exhibited in daily conversations,
jokes, and how we routinely relate to one another.
At this level, the tribal behavior may be conscious
or unconscious. The idea however, is to demean or
45
New Media in Kenya
lower one ethnic group in order to raise the profile
of the one to which the ethnocentric belongs. An
ethnocentric tendency at this level is implicit in
behavior and can be identified by certain behavioral signs. This often is done in very subtle ways.
For example, the belief that some ethnic groups
are more adept in particular jobs or tasks, and the
belief in differences in intelligence among certain
ethnic groups (what we call stereotypes).
Furthermore, the ethnocentric have no insight
into their own prejudice. They believe that their
prejudice is based upon objective grounds that
cannot be compromised. By this strong fixation,
an ethnocentric is capable of fanning violence and
other forms of crime towards members of what he
or she views as the ‘inferior’ ethnic group. He or
she could easily support the use of force to dogmatically maintain their ‘superior’ belief. Kenya
as a Nation, witnessed this in the run-up to the
general elections and even after these elections.
In Kenya, ethnicity has taken the form of
the ‘ethnification of political and economic processes’, which means that people are made to treat
ethnicity as increasingly relevant to their personal
and collective choices in terms of choice of candidates during elections, investment, residence, and
even social interactions such as marriages (Wodak
2001). According to Onyango (2008) political
leaders and the people they lead are stimulated to
consolidate, form or stabilize an ethnic identity;
thus the political opportunity afforded by ethnic
networks is easily exploited for political support.
Onyango (2008) further notes that most ethnic
groups in Kenya associate the relative economic
prosperity of some Kalenjins and Kikuyus to the
real/imagined favors derived from the political
advantages that accrued to them during the Moi
- Kalenjin (1978-2002) and Kenyatta - Kikuyu
(1963-1978) presidencies respectively. The same
was and is now being said of the Kibaki presidency
(2002-2012). Thus, there is common talk of those
who have ‘eaten’. In terms of political mobilization, therefore, political leaders call upon their
ethnic communities to group together and fight
46
for political office either as a way of ensuring
their continued stay in power, so as to continue
‘eating’, or to gain political power as a way of
finding an ‘eating place’.
Mute (2008) argues that the ground was fertile
for what ensued after the 2007 elections. Campaigning, particularly through new media, took
an ugly bent, with ethnically prejudiced and stereotyped coverage. The Kenyan blogs and online
sites, populated primarily by a youthful generation
of Kenyans, many of whom lived abroad, did the
same. Text messages circulated around the country,
playing on angers and resentments arising from
the material reality of historical and contemporary
inequalities and injustices, but once again articulated and promoted as being ethnically-based, and
experienced as such too. Given the ethnicities of
the two presidential contenders - Kikuyu, in the
case of Mwai Kibaki and Luo, in the case of Raila
Odinga - perhaps insufficient attention was paid
to similar angers and resentments in other ethnic
communities, particularly among the Kalenjin,
whose leading politicians had cast their lot in with
Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement (ODM).
Recent political problems that threaten to tear
Kenya apart require analysis that goes beyond
ethnicity as portrayed in new media and current
analyses that attempt to explain the situation. More
correctly, emphasis and focus should be placed
on the interpenetration of historical and current
political developments whose origins can be traced
in the early stages of state formation in Kenya.
During this time, White settlers got 20% of Kenya’s
high-potential farmlands. As these settlers failed to
provide enough state revenue and blocked African
opportunity, the British increasingly encouraged
African farming on the other 80%. So the second
economic centre became Kikuyu-land: home to
20% of the population; located close to the capital, Nairobi; cool and attractive to missionaries,
with more schools than the rest of the country.
By geographical accident, then, the Kikuyu had a
head start in making money (essential to advance
political ambitions) and in acquiring modern
New Media in Kenya
managerial skill. Not surprisingly, the Kikuyu also
bore the brunt of colonial capitalist dispossession
and socialization, and were in the vanguard of the
nationalist struggles that led to decolonization
and they came to dominate the postcolonial state
and economy. Capitalist development and centralization of power reinforced domination of the
Kenyan economy by the Central Province and the
Kikuyu, a process that withstood the twenty-four
year reign of President Moi, a Kalenjin from the
Rift Valley, and was reinvigorated under President
Kibaki’s administration. (See Mwolongo, 2008
and Hirsch, 2008)
In the new circumstances, other not-so-wellplaced ethnic groups made the most of what they
had. They were often driven by a local patriotism
inspired by vernacular, mission-translated, Bibles
that told of an enslaved people who became an
ethnic nation. They embarked, in combinations of
hope and desperation, on chain-migrations out of
pauper peripheries (not unlike the Scots or Irish in
comparable circumstances) to colonize particular
niches of employment: on the railway; on white
farms and plantations; in domestic service; or in
the police and army. Yet others came to dominate
the livestock trade.
Officials and employers exploited these various
tendencies and stereotyped the supposed ethnic
qualities of the group concerned. The British
helped to harden ethnic divisions made greater
by differing potentials for social mobility. The
emergence of ethnic consciousness also arose from
local debates about how the genders, generations,
rich and poor should relate, as older inequalities
were transformed into new differentiations less
sensitive to existing moral audits of honor.
Central Province and Kikuyu dominance
of Kenya’s political economy bred resentment
from other regions and ethnic groups. It fed into
constitutional debates about presidential and political centralization of power, and the regional
redistribution of resources that dominated Kenyan
politics until 2005 when the draft constitution
supported by the President and Parliament was
rejected in a referendum. The ODM was born in
the highly politicized maelstrom of the run up to
the 2005 referendum.
This narrative tends to ignore an important
qualifying fact, that not all Kikuyus are dominant
and not all Luos are disempowered. Colonial,
neo-colonial and neo-liberal capitalisms have bred
class differentiations within communities as much
as they have led to uneven development among
regions. In other words, Kenyan elites have much
more in common with each other than they do
with their co-ethnics among peasants and workers
who also have more in common with each other
across ethnic boundaries than with their respective
elites. This is a reality that both the elites and the
masses strategically ignore during competitive
national elections, because the former need to
mobilize and manipulate their ethnic constituencies in intra-elite struggles for power, and the latter
because elections offer one of the few moments
to shake the elites for the crumbs of development
for themselves and their areas.
In order to investigate the relationship between
language and ethnic identity, or ethnicity, one has
to first understand how the concept of ethnicity is
indeed planted among an ethnic group. According
to Wa Wamwere (2008), the study of ethnicity
diverges into two different opinions, namely the
“primordialism” and “instrumentalism” perspectives. In the primordial’s view, ethnicity is regarded
as ‘constituting’ a fundamental feature of society
and that ethnic identity is natural and unalienable.
In other words, the ethnicity of a group is defined
by its cultural and biological heritage, and is territorially rooted. It is thus grounded by the group’s
primordial ties and bound by the ancestors’ values,
myths, languages, among other values.
On the other hand, instrumentalists argue that
the primordial approach emphasizes too much on
the objective nature of ethnicity, which stresses
that ethnicity is a ‘given’ and one is born with it
(Wa Wamwere, 2008: 52). They criticize the fact
that the primordial approach cannot explain the
evolution of ethnic groups over time. Instead of
47
New Media in Kenya
admitting solely to primordial ties, instrumentalists emphasize that ethnicity of a group should be
understood in terms of its relationship to other
groups. This simply means that the members of
an ethnic group identify themselves subjectively
in relation to other groups in order to maximize
their social interest. Worsley (2007) argues that
cultural traits are not absolute or simply intellectual
categories, but are invoked to provide (ethnic)
identities, which legitimize claims to rights. They
are strategies or weapons in competitions over
scarce social goods. Adopting the instrumental
approach to ethnicity, the relationship between
language and ethnic identity in new media will
be much more transparent to us.
The instrumental view holds that ethnicity is a
subjective way of interpreting a group’s identity,
often in the hope of maximizing the members’
interest. However, in order to identify a group’s
separate and unique ethnicity, the members often
have to in some way find themselves certain features which can distinguish them from the other
ethnic groups. For instance, biological heritage,
religious divergence and language difference are
commonly cited as proofs of ethnicity.
It is, however, safe to argue that the very
majority of our social life depends on the use of
language: the use of different languages naturally
separates people into different groups, each not
being able to understand the others. Lacking
channels of communication, we typically identify
others as being ‘different’ from us. This is what
makes language such a prominent objective factor in defining ethnicity. To say language is to
say society (Yieke, 2007). Thus if one speaks
a particular language, then one belongs to that
particular society. The idea of language itself is,
however, sometimes not an objective fact, but a
matter of subjective interpretation and is often
employed purposefully as an ethnic distinction.
Linguistically, every regional dialect is more or
less different from the neighboring dialects. Even
though we may normally regard these dialects as
dialects of the same language, it is so easy to take
48
this difference as the evidence of independent
ethnicity once the speakers find this parallel to
their interest. Consequently, this flexibility (or
otherwise ambiguity) in defining ‘language’ creates its link to ethnic identity in Kenya.
6. DIGITAL MEDIA IN KENYA
In Kenya, the traditional media (electronic and
print media) has played significant roles in the
mobilization of voters’ as well as for political
campaigns. The independent Kenyan government
inherited the authoritarian colonial government’s
dominant perception of the media as a necessary
evil that deserved close supervision and control.
The colonial government feared a free and thriving
nationalist media that acted as the mouthpiece for
political independence. It enacted the Penal Code
in 1930, to control alleged seditious nationalist
publications such as Sauti ya Mwafrika (African
voice), Uhuru wa Mwafrika (African freedom),
African Leader, Inooro ria Agikuyu (The voice of
the Gikuyu) among others. Similarly, the Kenyatta
Government was averse to an independent and
foreign owned media playing a watchdog role
that could cause disaffection towards the young
government. As a result similar patterns of media
ownership and development continued as they
were under the colonial rule. Consequently the
Independent African government entered the shoes
of the colonial rulers.
The traditional media on the other hand is
not immune from governmental controls which
take the form of political representations to the
owners and threats to sue through courts of law,
state raids as it happened with the Standard media
Group in 2006 and the ban on live media reports
as it happened on December 30th 2007.
During the 2007 Kenyan elections the new
media technologies used by citizen journalists
and community organizers were the same ones
used by forces in the government who sought to
rig the election, and agitators who attempted to
New Media in Kenya
expand ethnic violence. One lesson from the use
of information technology in the Kenyan crisis is
that the new media technology itself is neutral. It
can be used powerfully to give citizens a voice in
crisis situations, or used to aggravate those same
crises and thus does not take sides. We therefore
argue for both sides of the coin by putting into
sharp focus the power of the new media technologies in the Kenyan context.
Understanding the role of new media in the
elections crisis requires a brief history of Kenyan
digital media as well. With an estimated 3 million
Internet users, Kenya has one of the highest levels
of Internet penetration in sub-Saharan Africa, at
7.9% (of major sub-Saharan African countries –
discounting those with populations under a million
– only South Africa has higher net penetration.)
(http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats1.htm)
More than 12 million Kenyans – roughly
30% of the population – have mobile phones, as
compared to a continent-wide penetration of 20%.
Kenyan companies have been early adopters of
mobile money transfer systems like M-PESA2
and complex SMS-based systems like Kazi5603
which matches jobseekers and employers via their
phones. (http://www.boston.com/news/world/
africa/articles/2008/06/09/kenya-mobile-phonecompanys-ipo-get-warm-debut)
New technologies have done much to advance
both the country’s democracy and its economy.
During the recent crisis, these technologies played
a very different role, however.
Text messages spread hateful ethnic views
rapidly and may have helped leaders to enact
plans for ethnic violence on a large scale. The
public was bombarded not just with hateful and
derogatory depictions of politicians and of ethnic
groups but also with the idea that it was acceptable
to express hatred electronically and to share that
expression much more widely than would be possible for an ordinary individual prior to the advent
of this new medium. Some of the messages went
beyond identifying groups and their interests to
denigrating particular ethnicities by using familiar
stereotypes of their qualities or behaviors, such as
laziness, acquisitiveness, and callousness.
Charles Onyango-Obbo, the Nation Media
Group’s managing editor for convergence and new
products, reported on Mashada blog on December
21st that “There were SMSs landing in his cell
phone’s inbox literally every 15 minutes in the
last two weeks of the campaign, emanating from
all sorts of support groups for the candidates…
after the dispute over the outcome, the texts were
arriving every five minutes, and they were meaner,
nastier and more propaganda-filled.” Pervasive
texting of negative ethnic speech also allowed
for the participation of Kenyans living in the
Diaspora, who might have had less involvement
in, and impact on, all aspects of the election.
Against this backdrop, it makes sense that
Kenyans would emerge as early adopters of
new media. Prominent Kenyan blogs, including
Daudi Were’s “Mental Acrobatics” have been
online since early 2003. Starting in 2004, Kenya
“Unlimited” has aggregated posts from individual
blogs on a central site and provided a “web ring”,
a navigation mechanism that links related weblogs
together. In 2006, a nationwide blogging contest
– the Kenya Blog Awards or “Kay bees” – helped
bring together individual Kenyan bloggers into a
community. Afrigator, an African blog aggregator
based in South Africa, cites two Kenyan blogs in
its list of top twenty blogs, giving the country the
second best representation on that list (after South
Africa, which dominates).
Several Kenyan Bloggers took pains to
document the 2007 election, but there was little
indication from their posts that any anticipated
the unusual events that would follow the election. Describing his voting experience, and the
precautions taken by the Electoral Commission
of Kenya (ECK) to prevent election fraud, Daudi
Were observes:
One thing I noticed was that no one was wearing
any political party merchandise and the conversations in the queue were distinctly non political
49
New Media in Kenya
and non ethnic. Rather than being divided, by
queuing together to exercise our civic duty and
responsibility, we were bound together in a sort
of patriotic camaraderie. We all felt it was worthwhile to take part in the vote and that ultimately
was what mattered. http://www.mentalacrobatics.
com/think/archives/2007/12/voting-experiencekenya-election-2007-php.
The tone – and focus – of coverage changed
sharply on December 30th, as it became clear that
the disputed election would be declared in Kibaki’s
favor. The ban on live media reports particularly
incensed Okolloh, who had been monitoring television, radio, the Internet, SMS and local gossip to
produce several election updates per day. When the
live coverage ban was announced, she declared:
“All live broadcasts have been suspended by the
government. The order was released as ODM was
addressing their press conference. This is now
officially a police state. So we have no idea what
ODM is saying, and what the security situation is
around the country. ” http://www.kenyanpundit.
com/2007/12/30/media-blackout-announced/
Onyango-Obbo, writing in the East African
newspaper, argues that there were around 600
blogs around the elections: “Some of them spewing
shocking ethnic vitriol… many African nations
are already on the verge of being failed states, so
we should be very afraid that at highly emotional
moments like the recent Kenyan election, it’s
the subversive forces and hate-peddlers who are
winning the SMS and blog wars.” (http://www.
kenyanpundit.com/2007/12/30/media-blackoutannounced/) It is thus imperative that much of
the Blogosphere in the country, as diverse as it is,
can also be characterized as highly factionalized
and often virulent in their content.
In the wake of a ban on live media, some
Kenyan bloggers responded by redoubling their
efforts as citizen journalists. Reeling from the
violence in her native Eldoret residence, Juliana
Rotich began posting brief bulletins on refugee
movements, fuel shortages, road and airport clo-
50
sures. Some were posted via SMS using Twitter to
disseminate messages to a wider audience; other
bloggers featured photos and these were uploaded
to Flickr using a GPRS modem. Were took to the
streets on January 3rd 2008, following ODM activists as they attempted to march to Uhuru Park to
attend a banned rally. His photos document the
empty streets of the usually-bustling capital and
the tense standoffs between activists and security
forces, and provided insights on the confrontation
hard to find in international media covering the
confrontations. http://www.flickr.com/photos/
afropicmusing/sets/72157603595279896.
As Kenyans and the international community
try to come to terms with what happened after the
2007 elections, it would be useful to systematically think about the role played by new media
which has been a key force for democratization in
Kenya during the recent political upheavals like
the 2002 elections. But as things unraveled after
the 2007 elections, one could not help but wonder
whether the new media could have done better or
whether new media could have helped forestall
the fallout. The new media in Kenya has played a
central role in shaping Kenya’s democracy. It had
gained a reputation for acting as vigorous fora for
public debate and it was seen as a guardian of the
public interest against overweening state power.
The recent record of the new media, according
to many within it (see Rotich and Goldstein,
2008), is that new media has undermined as
well as invigorated that democracy. As a result,
development actors should be better engaged and
more supportive of new media in the future. The
argument being fore-grounded here then is that
the problem facing Kenya’s new media (citizen
media) is not how technically sophisticated and
globally connected it is but rather how neutral the
technology itself was and how the new media was
utilized positively or negatively in Kenya during
the 2007 general elections.
New Media in Kenya
7. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
The chapter has adopted an eclectic approach
in its theoretical framework, De Fleur and Ball
Rokeach’s (1989) Functionalist Theory of Media,
and Tan’s (1984) Social Responsibility Theory
and Ethnicity as a Colonial Formation conceptual
framework guided the study.
The Functionalist theory posits that the more
the audience is dependent on the media for information and the more a society is in a state of crisis
or instability, then the more power the media are
likely to have (or be credited with). The theory
proposes an integral relationship among audiences,
media and the larger social system. This theory
predicts that we depend on media information to
meet certain needs and achieve certain goals, like
uses-and-gratifications. But we do not depend on
all media equally. Two factors influence the degree of media dependence. First, one will become
more dependent on media that meet a number
of one’s needs than on media that provide just a
few. The second source of dependency is social
stability. When social change and conflict are high,
established institutions, beliefs, and practices are
challenged, forcing one to re-evaluate and make
new choices. At such times our reliance on the
media for information will increase. At other,
more stable times our dependency on media
may go way down. One’s needs are not always
strictly personal but may be shaped by the culture
or by various social conditions. In other words,
individuals’ needs, motives, and uses of media
are contingent on outside factors that may not be
in the individuals’ control. These outside factors
act as constraints on what and how media can be
used and on the availability of other non-media
alternatives. Furthermore, the more alternatives
an individual has for gratifying needs, the less
dependent he or she will become on any single
medium. The number of functional alternatives,
however, is not just a matter of individual choice
or even of psychological traits but is limited also
by factors such as availability of certain media.
In 1989, Ball-Rokeach and DeFleur stated that
as technology increases the way in which media
can be delivered, its influence becomes even
more powerful, and this assertion could not have
been truer.
This functionalist theory is nearly only useful
for considering questions of social integration.
In a complex society, there will be a number of
different ways for societies to achieve a required
degree of control and consensus and new media
are only one institution among several with overlapping tasks in this respect. The tenets of this
theory are invoked in the analysis of the emergent
patterns of whether the ethnic crisis in Kenya was
as a result of the power credited to new media in
Kenya. The theory also guided the researchers’
conclusion that new media fell short of negative
ethnicity control and consensus in Kenya.
Social responsibility theory proposed by
Tan (1984) states that the media has a social
responsibility that it is called upon to accept; in
recognition of their essential role in political and
social life. The media, according to this theory,
has to provide a “full, truthful, comprehensive and
intelligent account of the day’s events in a context
which gives them meaning. Secondly, the media
should serve as a forum for the exchange of comment and criticism and be common carriers of the
public expression. Thirdly, the media should give
a representative picture of constituent groups in
society and also present and clarify the goals and
values of society. However, the social responsibility theory emphasizes responsibility of the media
to the society it serves as opposed to freedom per
se. The social responsibility theorists take the
position that the new media need of necessity to
assume both moral and legal responsibilities for
all that they publish for the general good of the
society. The researchers analyzed their data against
these tenets to establish whether the data adhered
to the tenets or deviated from them.
Ethnicity as a colonial formation conceptual
framework is used to explain the division of Kenya into groups otherwise referred to as ethnic
51
New Media in Kenya
groups. The British divided the Kenyan territory
along ethnic lines into eight provinces, creating
a different majority in each; each province was
subdivided into districts, often according to ethnic groups and subgroups. For example, the Luo
are based mainly in Nyanza (though it is also the
home to the Kisii, who have their own district);
the Luhya, in Western Province; the Kikuyu, in
Central Province; the Somali, in North-Eastern
Province; and the Mijikenda, in the Coastal Province. The Rift Valley is dominated by the Kalenjin,
but also contains Maasai, Turkana and Samburu
districts. The Kamba share Eastern Province with
Embu and Meru, among others. Nairobi is the
most cosmopolitan province, with the Kikuyu
forming a plurality. It has also often been noted
that the structure of colonial administration crystallized the population into tribes creating them
where they did not previously have meaning. This
framework guided the researchers in data collection and analysis as the emerging patterns were
analyzed, described and correlated with ethnicity.
The colonial ethnic crystallization in turn created
extremely new forms of ethnic competition. Today
ethnicity in Kenya means politicized kinship more
than it does anything else, a kind of overpowering identify informed by grievances of sense of
people wronged of being under siege.
8. METHODOLOGY
The research employed purposeful sampling in
collecting the data, drawn from the 2007 post election reports and new media. Excerpts of electronic
mails and text messages circulated during the 2007
post election violence and those forwarded to the
Waki commission of inquiry and major blogs updates prior to, during and after the 2007 elections
were also analyzed through content analysis. The
study used qualitative research methods where by
the data were analyzed descriptively for meaning.
The findings are derived from the facts collected
52
and analyzed from oral and documentary evidence
that was gathered by the researchers.
9. E-MAILS, TEXT MESSAGES,
MOBILE TELEPHONY AND BLOGS
We collected e-mail messages and text messages
that were circulated before, during and after the
2007 Kenyan elections for our analysis. The
researchers made a public request through their
Facebook, Twitter and My Space updates which
forms part of new media for people to forward
e-mails and text messages that were circulated
prior, during and after the elections. Due to the
sensitive nature of the content of information
being circulated majority of the people declined
to forward the e-mails and text messages. Some
claimed that it might land them into trouble,
as it was illegal to circulate confrontational
information with a law on hate speech now in
place. One update that captures this read “which
sane and God fearing person will keep them.”
Other participants did not want to be associated
with the issue claiming that we were collecting
evidence to forward to the International Criminal
Court (ICC). We were thus unable to collect the
expected number of text messages for analysis
since most people did not have handsets with a
large memory to store them and thus had deleted
them; however we analyzed the few that we collected which we believe are more than enough. We
on the other hand collected 35 e-mail messages
that were sampled purposively to get the e-mail
messages analyzed for this study. Data from the
Kenyan key Blogs such as Mashada, Thinker’s
Room, Ushahidi (witness) and What an African
Woman Thinks were collected and analyzed. We
did a content analysis of the e-mails, text messages and blogs specifically focusing on the use
of derogatory terms, demeaning words, the nature
of ethnic animosity expressed and, on a positive
note, how these new digital technology media
helped to counter negative ethnicity.
New Media in Kenya
10. SUBJECTIVITY AND VALIDITY
As researchers, we filtered data through our own
expertise and knowledge, which enabled us to derive meaning (Creswell, 1998; Denzin & Lincoln,
1994), yet this filter also likely colors our analysis
and interpretations. We minimized possible negative effects of subjectivity by analyzing data from
a variety of new media sources such as e-mails,
text messages and blogs.
11. FINDINGS
Although the new media in Kenya portrayed the
violence as purely political, its basis was clearly
ethnic or tribal. Initially, the violence in Kenya
was described as a revolt against disputed election results, but when observers began to identify
ethnic patterns to the violence, the comparisons
to the Rwandan genocide flowed swiftly through
the international media. The Western media tore
Kenya into shreds. For the two months, the hitherto peaceful Kenya found itself painted in the
worst of adjectives, such as “genocide”, “ethnic
cleansing”, savagery (or tribalism) and so on. For
the entire two months after the 2007 December
polls, Kenyans waited anxiously for the Western
media to change tact and be compassionate. It
never happened. For failing to cultivate its own
niche, the Kenyan press which normally borrows
heavily from the Western media--found itself torn
between the sensational reporting of the Western
media and the hard facts on the ground. It chose
sensationalism. At a recent meeting under the aegis
of The East African Editors Forum, top editors
within the region accepted that they had played
second fiddle to the Western media and engaged in
a soul-searching of their true call. Adam Mynott,
who reported on the crisis for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) does not believe that
the BBC exaggerated the scale of the violence,
and he shares the criticisms made of those who
compared the violence to the Rwandan genocide.
“I don’t think the BBC did compare the violence
to the Rwandan genocide, although others did. It’s
a ludicrous parallel to draw,” he says, “800,000
people died in Rwanda and 1,000 people died in
Kenya, so it is a comparison that is odious.” (http://
commonco.typepad.com/8months/2008/02/
reporting-on-co.html)
Every day, footage of the police beating protesters, houses burning, displaced persons, blocked
roads, ad infinitum, was aired on online bulletin
boards for all to revel in. Whereas telling-it-asit-is is encouraged in the media, still it has to be
done in a responsible and balanced way. But the
slant of the Western media coverage was appalling. They put a spin on events, negating the very
principles of a fair and just practice of the trade.
They disproportionately made everyone to think
that the whole country was aflame (http://www.eir.info/?p=475)
New media reports on the Kenyan elections
especially blogs of the protests following the inauguration of President Kibaki almost invariably included the word ‘tribal’; the reference is to ‘tribes’
and ‘tribalism’ as primordial identities untouched
by history, as ancient hatreds immune to modernity,
as pathological conditions peculiar to Africa. During the violence that surrounded Kenya’s recent
elections, for example, Mashada blog documented
that “tribal war” had exploded between the Kikuyu
and Luo with picture footage of “gangs going
house to house, dragging people of certain tribes
out of their homes and clubbing them to death”.
This was an “atavistic vein of tribal tension that
always lay beneath the surface but up until now
had not provoked widespread mayhem” (http://
www.recesspa.org/index.php?option=com_
content&view=article&id=98:a-framework-formedia&catid=44:april&Itemid=191).
As Oyugi (1997) correctly argues, when political contradictions are not adequately addressed in
the media, they tend to have adverse consequences
on inter-ethnic relations in the society. Conversely,
Wa Wamwere (2008) contends that these clashes
cannot properly be described as ethnically moti-
53
New Media in Kenya
vated, ethnicity is a positive distinction, and has
nothing of the hatred here at work. Generally,
Kenyans primarily identify themselves according to their tribe or ethnic group first, and then
secondly as Kenyans.
Indeed, Kenyan media reports, during what
many regarded as ethnic-divided elections, contributed to the violent ethnic clashes that killed
over a thousand people and displaced more than
a quarter of a million others (http://www.westminster.ac.uk/schools/media/news-and-events/
events/2010/racism,-ethnicity-and-the-mediain-africa)
12. SHORT MESSAGE
SERVICE (SMS), ELECTRONIC
MAILS AND BLOGS
In Kenya, as in the rest of Africa, Short Message
Service (SMS) is the most widely used digital
application (Bayne 2008). Prior to, during and
after the 2007 elections the new media and
specifically mobile phones, e-mails, and blogs
emerged as significant communication tools.
This new technology was perceived to be efficient and a cost effective way of mobilization
of voters by the Kenyan politicians prior to the
elections. Mobile telephony and more specifically
the Short Message Service (SMS) was spreading
very fast like a virus. The vial nature of SMS was
capitalized on by the political parties for political
marketing and thereafter the elections as a tool
for spreading ethnic hatred and organizing ethnic
violence. The political marketing experts as well
as independent mobile phone users, bloggers
and the owners of the e-mail accounts, generated
these messages. Significantly, most of the ethnic
based jokes, humor and hate speech were written in Kenya’s local vernaculars. Very few were
written in English while the rest were in Swahili.
The reason for using the vernaculars was, first,
that some of the messages lose their weight and
meaning when translated into Swahili or English.
54
Secondly, ethnicity is very central in the Kenyan
election process. Political language is translated
and interpreted using ethnic background and history as such any political communication must be
codified into relevant vernaculars for it to leave
an impression in people’s mind. On the one hand,
these messages focused intense attention on the
competing presidential candidates from both the
Party of National Unity (PNU) and the Orange
Democratic Movement (ODM) in a way that
promoted a healthy debate through providing new
space relevant for democratic strengthening never
witnessed before. On the other hand, these new
media devices led to negative political campaigns
that also became extremely ethnic based after the
elections.
However, if the ethnic discourse of disparagement was covert in the public, in private it was
more overt and marked outright disparagement
(Waki, 2008). Largely, the SMS in mobile phones
was a remarkable medium. There were so many
messages used to campaign prior to the elections
but we just use the sampled examples to illustrate
our point. On the part of ODM supporters, one
message that was circulated read:
A Deadly Mountain Flu known as PNU, which
affects the brain, has been reported in Central
Kenya. The region is under quarantine. People in
other parts of Kenya are advised to take ODM pills.
One full orange for 3 months to avoid infection.
(http://inanafricanminute.blogspot.com/2007/04/
dark-sideof-mobilization.html.)
This was coded ethnic discourse. In the first
place, PNU was seen as a Central Kenya affair.
Therefore, PNU was mainly seen in terms of the
Kikuyu ethnic group who are the leading inhabitants of Central Kenya. Secondly, PNU was also
seen as a negative thing (flu or disease) that is
associated with Mount Kenya region. In fact, the
supposed sacred cows in President Kibaki’s first
five-year tenure were referred to as “Mount Kenya
Mafia” (see Onyango 2008). This was a referential
New Media in Kenya
strategy that associated PNU stronghold with a
disease rooted mainly in the Gikuyu, Embu and
Meru Association (GEMA) - mega-ethnicity that
had its stronghold in the Mount Kenya region.
To many Mount Kenya out-groups any time the
mountain is mentioned, the bell that rings is that
of GEMA, because all the conglomerate ethnic
groups of GEMA come from around Mount Kenya. This message of disparagement ended with
a fallacy cushioned in persuasion, in line with the
spirit of campaign. It persuaded people to take
a full orange for three months to avoid the flu.
The implicit message here was that people who
were targeted by the message were to remain
steadfast in ODM during the whole period of the
campaigns (shown by the three months). The issue
of quarantine was also a persuasive strategy that
appealed to the audience of the message to keep
off PNU. The idea of full orange was very precise
to ODM’s party symbol that was a full orange.
On the part of the PNU supporters, one short
message against the Luo ethnic group read thus:
Do you want to be ruled by Luo to take us back
to joblessness? Safeguard the Kingdom. Let us
ALL come out and give all the votes to Kibaki so
that we are not ruled by an uncircumcised man
who will make us wear shorts and plunder all our
wealth. It’s your vote that will prevent our country
from going back to Egypt. May our God bless you.
(http://allafrica.com/stories/200802291070.html)
In this text message, an ethnic stereotype that
was coined against the Luo during the colonial
period is revisited. During the colonial period,
careful social engineering came up with ethnocentric labels that labeled the Kikuyu as cheeky,
the Luo: genetically lazy and the Maasai as
trustworthy albeit trustworthy natives (Ochieng,
1975). Thus, this is the right place to place “the
Luo to take us to joblessness” referential strategy
in the above discourse. In the question of the Luo
not being circumcised implies not being ripe to
lead. The Luo do not traditionally circumcise
their male, the inner groups that supported PNU
traditionally circumcise their male. The question
of male circumcision has been a very intriguing
point in ethnic discourse that is associated with top
leadership. Although Ochieng (2001) reckons that
the circumcision trivia on the Luo is remarkably
central Kenya discourse, it is, however, true that
this discourse is common rhetoric among the male
circumcising groups of Kenya when referring to
the Luo in negative terms. In this line of thought,
among the people of Coast, the Luo are called
“watu wazima”, that is complete persons, because
they have not been cut. Similarly, the Bukusu refer
to the Luo as “omusinde”, the uncircumcised.
Actually, in the National Referendum campaign
on the new Constitution in 2005, Honorable Simon Nyachae, who hails from Nyanza with Raila
Odinga but from the male circumcising Kisii group
also expressed the uninitiated boy sentiments when
referring to Raila Odinga. The idea of “putting on
shorts” can be seen in the context of “boyhood.”
Although Kenya is a tropical country and
therefore putting on of shorts would be good
for adults, generally, it is boys and not men who
are associated with shorts. This is understood in
full in relation to our discussion on circumcision
above. “Going back to Egypt” is taken from the
Bible, a Holy Book. Egypt is associated with the
suffering of God’s chosen people. In this text,
therefore, we see a fallacious campaign maneuver
that was sought to associate ODM leadership with
suffering. The conclusion of the text was “may
our God Bless you”, that was, in a nutshell, a false
appeal to revered authority. However, whereas we
know that God is not discriminatory, in this message the appeal for God’s blessings was for those
who were to heed the message of not voting for a
Luo and God is reduced to a specific group; that
is, the senders of the message and their targeted
ethnic audience seen in, “our God”. The issue of
revering PNU in this text was seen in the urge
to safeguard the “kingdom”, which was in fact
a mega- ethnic kingdom, no more no less. The
use of ALL in capital letters was populist and a
55
New Media in Kenya
persuasive appeal. This is the important background to the discursive analysis of new media
and ethnicity in Kenya prior to, during and after
the 2007 elections.
This epithet also seems to combine gender discrimination with ethnocentrism. Gender discrimination occurs in the sense that the uncircumcised
are viewed to be feminine and thus unqualified to
rule. Specifically, the comment on the suitability
of a political candidate, depending on whether he
had been circumcised or not addresses the politics
of ethnicity and gender in relation to power. When
people are criticized for their lack of circumcision as evidence of their demeaned ethnicity, the
insult is as much targeting masculinity as ethnicity. Mwolongo (2008) asserts that, the history of
sexist use of language makes that terrain of insult
more readily available and makes certain such an
ethnic slur doubly demeaning.
Yieke (2008) documents how utterances that
urged Kenyans from particular ethnic groups
settled in various parts of the country to return
to their region of origin expressed a “politics of
inclusion and exclusion” that related directly to
longstanding land disputes and the movement
of ethnic groups. Certain references were not
newly invented for the election violence but
rather resembled statements made about people
from surrounding nations who had entered Kenya
as refugees or economic migrants and were no
longer welcome. These individuals castigated as
“foreigners” and “visitors” were clearly positioned
as having no entitlement to Kenyan residence.
Using such terms in reference to Kenyan citizens
has the effect of suggesting that they too can be
disenfranchised from civil rights, land, residence,
and even identity as Kenyans. Note here that
seemingly ordinary terms such as foreigner and
visitor gain hurtful power when used in a context
of ethnic mobilization.
Those who engaged in negative ethnicity during the 2007 election violence voiced not just the
well-worn and familiar stereotypes of commonly
circulating ethnic jokes about lazy or lascivious
56
politicians or ethnic groups, but they also used
cold, dehumanizing language. They called people
“spots” or “weeds” that needed to be cleansed
or pulled out. They referred to fellow Kenyans
as animals (e.g., mongoose, snakes) or insects
(see, Mwalongo 2008). The following blog on
Mashada tells it all, “Kikuyu are like mongoose
which is ready to eat chickens. All other tribes,
i.e. Luo, Kisii, Luhyas are all animals in the forest. They cannot be able to lead this country like
Kikuyus.” The use of dehumanizing epithets, as
well as the refusal to speak of certain groups of
people as humans, is a key indicator that groups
in conflict may have become locked in axiological opposition (Rothbart and Bartlett 2007). One
other e-mail referring to a Kibaki minister with
his portrait read:
Rattlesnake Me-Chuki (hatred). This man is the
most famous rigging mastermind Kikuyu in Kenya. Known for his ‘rattlesnake’ temper, he has
a tongue that dates back from colonial administration. Look at his eyes, cunning and foxy. He is
the power-behind-the-throne. He is the shadow
president of Kenya.4
The rationale implicit in the use of dehumanizing, value-laden language is: “We are the good
and they are the evil. We are the people and they
are the animals. We are the worthy and they are
the killable.” Such dualistic rhetoric tends to be
an indicator that significant violence is possible.
Some uses of dehumanizing language may operate as fighting words that incite ethnic violence
in self defense by those who experience insult
and threat. Relatedly, these words also offer an
ideological justification for those - either speaker
or hearer - who might engage in physical violence. As an aside, for words to cause or justify
ethnic violence, that is, to have a specific effect,
technologies of violence must also exist. Words
alone may heighten emotions, but when people
decide to engage in violence they must have the
New Media in Kenya
tools (even rudimentary) and the organization
(even haphazard) to do so.
From the foregoing discussion of ethnic conflict in Kenya, we can infer that ethnic discourse
depicts ethnic conflict. The argumentation scheme
in ethnic discourse is one that explicates positive
self-presentation and negative other-presentation.
It is in the question of positive self-presentation
and negative other-presentation that we locate the
issue of discrimination in ethnic discourse. In this
respect, we argue that ethnic discourse decries,
discredits, debases, degrades, defames and so on,
members of the competing out-groups.
Referential strategies are strategies in which one
constructs and represents social actors, in-groups,
out-groups by ways of reference tropes, biological,
naturalizing, depersonalizing, metaphors, metonymies as well as synecdoche. Predication strategies
are, for example, the stereotypical, evaluative
attributions of negative and positive traits in the
linguistic form of implicit or explicit predicates.
They are very close to referential strategies. In
Kenya, there are a number of ethnocentric labels
that embed referential and predicative strategies
that are used concerning various ethnic groups.
For example, in the text message, “…uproot the
“sangari”, ‘shake off the soil’, ‘gather it together’
and ‘burn it’ ” (Waki 2008: 218). The Kikuyu here
are labeled as ‘sangari’ – weed by the Kalenjin
ethnic group while in other text messages they
were labeled as Kenyambi (Kikuyu grass, a weed,
by the Gusii), the Kalenjin on the other hand are
called warriors.
In the deep heat of the campaigns before the
2007 general elections, disparaging ethnic discourse was evident across the partisan divide. For
example, there were e-mail messages that openly
called Raila Odinga of ODM “One Dangerous
Man” (Hirsch 2008: 8). This referential strategy
depicts pars pro toto (part standing for the whole)
(Reisigl and Wodak 2001:45 cited in Onyango,
2007), where Raila was taken as a part to represent
the Luo community or the whole of ODM. Just one
year before the 2007 general elections, Odinga’s
biography had been released that was interpreted
by strong PNU adherents as having implied that he
actively participated in the abortive coup of 1982,
during Moi’s regime. It is important to note that
during this abortive coup, most of the top brass
coup leaders who were later executed were the
Luo (Raila’s ethnic group). Thus, in the text of
“One dangerous Man” (a caricature of ODM, so
to speak), was the implication of danger implied
in a dangerous coup plotter who should not be
entrusted with the legitimate reins of power. On the
other hand, ODM supporters presented a counter
argument to PNU’s “One Dangerous Man” text.
To them the counter text was “One Daring Man”
that depicted Odinga as an unrivalled political
rights crusader in Kenya.
The use of mobile phones to pass negative
campaign and propaganda message proved to be
very infectious. As the Kenyan crisis unfolded,
many cell phone owners received SMS messages
that urged them to drive neighbors from their
houses: “If your neighbor is a Kikuyu, just kick
him or her out of that house. No one is going to ask
you anything.” Messages included expressions of
ethnic hatred and warnings that one ethnic group
would attack another. Opposition sympathizers
who translated such messages into their respective
vernaculars and passed them on to their contacts
personalized these messages that were centrally
produced by activists. The mobile phone users
actively participated and aggressively changed
the course of the campaign prior to the 2007
elections and ethnic based violence after the elections. In addition, the mobile phone users aware
of the limitation of SMS characters and aware of
negative and limited coverage given to opposition parties by the state owned media dedicatedly
invented lethal negative attacks and rumors that
were targeted at PNU candidates. Although the
SMS targeted the people with access to mobile
phones, such messages clearly appealed to them
to pass on the message and to ensure that as many
people as possible accessed them.
57
New Media in Kenya
Regarding the escalating violence in Kenya, the
European Union (EU) spokesman in the country,
one Bernard Barret is quoted as saying that rumors
were being spread by mobile phone text messages
predicting imminent attacks by one ethnic group
or another and that this is heightening tensions. It
is difficult to attach a positive or negative value to
these messages collectively. If they are true, then
they serve as a useful warning, enabling those who
are due to be attacked to protect themselves or to
flee. If they are not true, on the other hand, they
cause unnecessary panic and might lead to those
receiving them planning and executing attacks of
their own in order to pre-empt the attack of the
perceived enemy. Such messages according to a
post on a Kenyan blog “What an African Woman
Thinks,” were less sinister but just as dangerous.
The author draws a parallel between the calls to
genocide on Radio Rwanda in 1994 and the violent
SMS ethnic campaigns in Kenya:
It is one thing to broadcast subversive messages
on Radio as was the case in Rwanda, and is
alarmingly the case with some vernacular radio
stations in Kenya. It is an entirely different thing
to send these messages to a carefully selected list
of people on your contact list that will in turn send
them on to their own select list of people so that
the message spreads like a virus but catches only
people who answer to certain ‘characteristics.’5
And if you think this is farfetched, then take
another look at the Akiwumi (1994) Report according to which some people defended their acts
of aggression by saying that they had received
word that they were due to be attacked and that,
therefore, they were merely being offensive in
their own defense. It was more dangerous because
there was more stealth to it. It was not done in
the open; it was done in secret, making it harder
to put an end to it. In addition, the dissemination
instrument was not situated in one central place
that could be clamped down on easily as compared to old media. Rather, every mobile phone
58
within and without the country or blogger was
a potential dissemination instrument, making it
almost impossible to crackdown on the proliferators of these messages. Observers were afraid that
mobile phones would be for Kenya what Radio
was for Rwanda.
Unfortunately in such a state of unrest, it was
difficult to distinguish between fact and falsehood
in the flood of text messages that were filling
people’s phones each day. There were also messages spreading rumors that implicated Kenyan
companies and institutions in promoting violence.
The Nation Media Group had to officially deny
claims, spread primarily through text messages,
that their vans were being used to ferry guns to
far flung parts of the country. Half truths, untruths
and propaganda spread like wildfire. One person
sends it to five, those five send it to twenty, those
twenty send it to one hundred, and so it spreads
like wildfire.
Worse though, were text messages and e-mails
that were unrepentantly filled with hatred and
subversion. These became increasingly more
frenetic in the days leading up to the 2007 general
election, and reached a climax after the Electoral
Commission of Kenya (ECK) botched up the
tallying of votes and a disputed government was
hurriedly sworn in. On January 1, 2008, Kenyans
started to receive frightening text messages that
urged readers to express their frustrations with the
election outcome by attacking other ethnic groups.
One such message reads, “Fellow Kenyans, the
Kikuyu’s have stolen our children’s future...we
must deal with them in a way they understand...
violence.” (Hirsch, 2008: 11). In reaction, another
reads, “No more innocent Kikuyu blood will be
shed. We will slaughter them right here in the
capital city. For justice, compile a list of Luo’s,
Luhyas and Kalenjins you know...we will give
you numbers to text this information.” (Hirsch,
2008:11). Mass SMS tools were remarkably useful
for organizing this type of explicit, systematic,
and publicly organized campaign of mob ethnic
violence. These messages are part of a troubling
New Media in Kenya
trend in East Africa. In April 2007, three Ugandans
died in Kampala when violent acts were organized
via SMS to protest the Government of Uganda’s
sale of the Mabira Forest to Kakira Sugar Works.
These were the text messages that preached a
radical and dangerous message. These were the
messages that tell an individual all that is good
about him/her on account of ethnic identity and
all that is wrong with the Other on account of their
ethnic roots. These were the sometimes hysterical
text messages that justify hardliner stances and
violence visited upon the Other simply because
they are Other (ethnically). These text messages
called on the recipient to act in a certain way on
the basis of their ethnicity, and further, to regard
the Other or act upon the Other in a certain way
because of their ethnicity. What made these
subversive messages spreading by mobile phone
most sinister though, was the ability to select the
audience.
According Yieke (2008) mobile phones were
also used to coordinate riots and attacks on various
ethnic groups in Kenya. Text messages inciting
ethnic violence started to spread as early as January 1, 2008, urging Kenyans to “deal with them
(incumbent president Mwai Kibaki’s tribe, the
Kikuyu) the way they understand…violence.”
(Yieke, 2008:27) Messages in response called on
the Kikuyu to “slaughter them (members of opposition candidate Raila Odinga’s tribe, the Luo)
right here in the capital city.” (Yieke, 2008: 27)
There were also messages with a stern warning
on members of the Kikuyu community to leave
Coast region. One text message read:
Onyo kali nyinyi Wakikuyu Wakamba muliofika
tayari na wale ambao tuko na habari wanakuja
tutawauwa nyote. Hayo magari mlioleta tutayachoma yote. Kwa hivyo tunawapa masaa sabini
na mbili muondoke. Muondoee magari yenu kabla
ya muda kumalizika. Ama damu na majivu ya
mali yenu itamwagika from Kaya Revolution
Council. Similani Midzichenda. (Human Rights
Watch 2008: 54)
Translation:
You Kikuyus, Kambas, who have already arrived
here and those we have information that you are
coming. We shall kill all of you. We shall burn
all those vehicles you have brought. Therefore,
we are giving you 72 hours to leave. Get your
vehicles out of here before this time runs out. Or
your blood and ashes of your property will be
poured. From Kaya Revolution Council. Similani
Midzichenda (sic).
In retaliation other ethnic groups such as the
Luo, Luhya, Kalenjin and to a lesser extent the Kisii
communities living in Central Province which is
home to the Kikuyu ethnic group were targeted
during the post-election violence. Text messaging and e-mailing ordering non-Kikuyu ethnic
groups to leave Central Province were done with
precision. The perpetrators of these evictions appeared to have known exactly where non-Kikuyu
people lived, their mobile phone numbers and their
e-mails. The messages were sent to non-Kikuyu
residents giving them an ultimatum within which
they should have left. As a result Short Messaging
Services (SMS) were used to organize, rally and
galvanize the Kikuyu ethnic community against
other ethnic communities.
Yieke (2008) estimates that, “… according to
satellite mapping of the violence in the Rift Valley, 95 percent of the recent clashes in that area
have occurred on land affected by (settlement)
schemes.” Much of the violence in this region
is motivated by majimboism, which is a Swahili
term referring to the aspiration of a type of federalism composed of semi-independent regions
organized by ethnic groups. To many in the Rift
Valley, however, majimboism legitimizes violence
against Kikuyu’s who are seen as encroaching on
the ancestral land of other ethnic groups. It is also
worth noting that there are signs that those who
attempted to seek majimboism through targeted
violence largely achieved their goals. Human
Rights Watch (2008: 111) reports that:
59
New Media in Kenya
The events of the first months of 2008 have dramatically altered the ethnic makeup of many parts
of Kenya. Scores of communities across the Rift
Valley, including most of Eldoret itself, are no
longer home to any Kikuyu residents. The rural
areas outside of Naivasha, Nakuru, and Molo
are similarly emptying of Kikuyu while Kalenjin
and Luo are leaving the urban areas. In Central
Province, few non-Kikuyu remain. The slums of
Mathare, Kibera and others in Nairobi have been
carved into enclaves where vigilantes from one
ethnic group or another patrol ‘their’ areas. (See
http://www.knchr.org/dmdocuments/KPTJ_Final_Press_Release.pdf)
However, since new media, unlike old media,
is a multi-directional tool, there is also hope that
voices of moderation can make themselves heard.
In 1994 in Rwanda, radio was used to mobilize
the genocide, and moderate voices were unable to
respond. In Kenya, as hateful messages extended
their reach into the Kenyan population, Michael
Joseph, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of
Safaricom, Kenya’s largest mobile phone provider, was approached by a government official
who was considering shutting down the SMS
system. Joseph convinced the government not to
shut down the SMS system, and instead to allow
SMS providers to send out messages of peace and
calm, which Safaricom did to all nine million of
its customers. Kenyan mobile phone operators
also cooperated with the Kibaki government to
send messages to subscribers, urging them not to
send or forward inflammatory messages. Juliana
Rotich reported on the Mashada blog receiving
the following message on her mobile phone in
Eldoret: “The ministry Of Internal security urges
you to please desist from sending or forwarding
any SMS that may cause public unrest. This may
lead to your prosecution”.
Further, it is quite easy for governments and
companies to identify and track individuals that
promote hate speech. In the aftermath of the vio-
60
lence, contact information for the individuals who
allegedly promoted mob violence was forwarded
to the Government of Kenya. The ministry of information may have been premature in threatening
prosecution for forwarding messages that incited
violence. The Daily Nation newspaper (old media)
reported on March 1, 2008 that the government
had compiled a list of 1700 people who had forwarded text messages that incited ethnic violence.
However no action was taken as Kenya did not yet
have an applicable law to prosecute SMS, e-mail
and blog-based hate speech; a debate was instituted
in Parliament to create such a law (on electronic
hate speech) which is already in operation and is
being used to persecute hate speech peddlers in
the forth coming constitutional referendum.
Negative ethnicity was not limited to mobile
telephony. Blogs and e-mails were instrumental
in documenting post-election ethnic violence in
Kenya and in sharing this information with a global
audience during an otherwise total media blackout
instituted by the government. The Kenyan online
forum “Mashada” became so filled with violent
messages that its creator, David Kobia, shut it
down on January 29, 2008 for a cooling-off period
noting that it had been overwhelmed with hostile
and divisive messages. A screenshot taken of the
forum that day reads, “While we feel that people
need a space to interact; the majority of interaction
on Mashada.com has began to reflect the negative
aspects of what is happening in Kenya”:
Mashada will be back shortly…
While we feel that people need space to interact,
the majority of interaction on Mashada.com has
begun to reflect the negative aspects of what is
happening in Kenya.
In the meantime, anyone who feels that they still
want an avenue to express their views should
either visit the blogs, or better still their own blog.
New Media in Kenya
We still welcome any suggestions, comments or
questions. Contact us.
Let us promote Peace, Love and Unity in our
country. Pray for our beloved nation Kenya.
In an interview several months after the elections, Kobia noted that the media blackout caused
many Kenyans to look for information online.
He called the freedom of expression offered by
Mashada a “double-edged sword,” admitting that
it allowed people to share “imagined account[s]
of the truth” and that for those with “the intent
to spread ethnic vitriol on the website this is a
microphone” (www.mashada.com)
However, a few days later, Mashada’s site
administrator David Kobia launched “I Have No
Tribe”, a site explicitly centered on constructive
dialogue among Kenyans. As Ethan Zuckerman
writes: (I Have No Tribe) showed posts from
Kenyans around the country and around the world
wrestling with the statement, “I have no tribe… I
am Kenyan.” Kobia redirected the Mashada site
to the new site, and it rapidly filled with comments - combative as well as supportive, as well
poems and prayers. Kobia re-opened (Mashada)
on February 14th, having elegantly demonstrated
that one possible response to destructive speech
online is to encourage constructive speech.
The examples of SMS and online bulletin
boards illustrate the tension inherent in new
many-to-many digital communications tools. In
the Kenyan context, this architecture is a new
space where the predatory impulse to deepen
existing cultural divides meets head on with the
civic impulse for constructive and healing dialogue. Just as human rights activists used digital
tools to amplify their voice and lower their cost
of operations, so too did citizen journalists, who
used blogs, SMS, and e-mails to challenge the
narrative presented by mainstream Kenyan media
and the government.
14. CONCLUSION
There is solid evidence from our analysis for the
proposition that new media and the World Wide
Web offers a nascent public sphere in which a
national conversation about ethnicity that has yet
to happen might somehow be forged. It as well
emerges that new media has a significant role to
play in uniting or dividing a society with a variety
of ethnic groups. On the contrary, this chapter also
observes that ethnic based violent behaviors were
largely motivated by encounters with hate speech
in new media. The ethnic violence that characterized Kenya’s elections appears to have been the
result of deliberate manipulation and instigation
by new media. From our analysis, 85% of the
data analyzed indicated that the new media took a
central role in fanning the post-election violence.
The chapter contends that the upsurge of ethnic
violence instigated by new media has resulted into
more pronounced ethnic consciousness and that
Kenyan politics hinges primarily on ethnicity and
not ideology. This, therefore, demonstrates that
ethnic violence has had far-reaching implications
for the country. Our analysis has also shown that
the intervention - though late - by the mobile
telephone companies and blog owners decision to
counter the hate speech with messages of tolerance
(for example, Kenya: One Nation, One People)
and compelling local leaders to denounce egregious utterances - might have been effective in
pre-empting the violence and in handling future
instances. Our analysis has also shown that “some
new media became sensational and unnecessarily alarmed their audiences and inflamed their
passions”.
Further, the chapter concludes that language
is instrumental in accomplishing new media roles
and new media entrepreneurs must wake up to the
reality that all is not well. There is an urgent need
for new media to redefine a prescriptive strategy
based on historical reality and the current status
of ethnic relationships in Kenya. This should encompass the promotion of ethnic enlightenment
61
New Media in Kenya
through the recognition of ethnic differences and
the discovery of equitable ways to accommodate
them. It is our contention that with responsible
journalism, good governance, good media laws
and high literacy levels, such cases as witnessed
in the 2007 post Election violence in Kenya would
be avoided.
The chapter’s overall conclusion is that the role
of the new media in Kenya’s ethnic and political
crisis was entirely preventable and controllable,
and had it been prevented, the violence and the
ethnic animosity itself may well have been much
more limited. These were unambiguous criminal
acts that demanded government intervention, including through Section 96 of the Kenyan Penal
Code which outlaws (among other acts) language
calculated to bring death or injury to any person
or community of persons. New media’s role in
the future may be critical in the reconciliation and
restoration of democratic and ethnic legitimacy
in the months and years ahead.
15. SOLUTIONS AND
RECOMMENDATIONS
The government and non governmental bodies,
using new media, should design activities that
could broaden the public space for discussing
ethnicity in productive ways. Dialogues, media
presentations, and the recounting of histories of
inter-ethnic cooperation could all be considered. In
the wake of the violence, none of these were easy
to pursue and might not have been possible until
more time has passed. National dialogue on ethnic
relations could be a useful parallel to addressing
root causes as described above. Relatedly, efforts
towards post violence remedies, including reconciliation among groups, should include an explicit
discussion of the relations among language, power,
ethnic violence, new media and the context and
histories behind the recent expressions of hate
speech in new media. Kenya, Africa is not alone
62
in needing such a conversation; the United States
and other nations would benefit from attention to
the power of hateful language to effect violence
in various forms.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
We would like to express our gratitude to Solomon Aunga and Meshack Nyanamba for their
constructive input and meaningful discussions
during the conceptual stages of this chapter. We
further thank Marissa Furaha and Charles Kebaya
for their constructive comments.
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KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS
Ethnic Conflict: Cleavages between groups
based on differentiations in ethnic identities.
New Media in Kenya
Ethnic Group: Group of humans who share
the same primordial characteristics such as common ancestry, language and culture.
Ethnicity: Behavior and feeling (about oneself and others) that supposedly emanates from
membership of an ethnic group.
Hate Speech: Bigoted speech attacking or
disparaging a social or ethnic group or a member
of such a group.
New Media: Emergence of digital computerized or networked information and communication
technologies in the latter part of the 20th century
which are manipulatable, networkable, dense,
compressible and interactive.
2
3
4
5
ENDNOTES
1
See, for example, David Anderson, “Majimboism: the troubled history of an idea,”
in Daniel Branch & Nic Cheeseman (eds.),
Our Turn to Eat! Politics in Kenya since
1950 (Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2008).
M-pesa is a popular safe, reliable and fast
electronic money transfer system which allows Kenyans to bank and transfer money
for daily business transactions using their
mobile phones.
KAZI560 is a Kenyan job alert service that
matches subscribed job seekers to their career
jobs through mobile phones.
Make Text Not War, Humanitarian.info,
http://www.humanitarian.info/2008/04/24/
make-text-not-war/. of the 2007 Kenya’s
general elections
Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, “Text Messages Used
To Incite Violence in Kenya,” NPR News,
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.
php?storyId=19188853
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