Citizen Journalism:The Hyperlink of Fanning Election Violence In Kenya.

Kenyans are a resilient people and they have been known to both spring back and come together as one during various calamities facing the nation. Remember Kenyans for Kenya campaign, Bring Zack Back Home, #147NotJustANumber campaign that honored Kenyans in Garissa terror attack? The list is endless. From situations that are local as those, to campaigns such as #boycottkoffiolomide that led to the international Congolese music star being deported, Kenyans have been known to be vibrant on social media platforms.

They have advocated for positive causes and even impacted meaningful change such as spirited fights that saw the ‘high and mighty’ resigning on corruption allegations. There is no doubt this platform is a powerful platform. Kenyans have even gone further and built a whole army on this platform-KOT (Kenyans on Twitter). This army has been known to be brash, quick, creative and many other terms that would fit their description based on the circumstance. Many are warned both in peer discussions, parliamentary debates and even the then presidential aspirant such as Donald Trump not to mess with this army.

In all the good, funny and outright creative that can be said of Kenyans and their use of these platforms, there is equally a great deal of stuff to worry about: Cyber bulling, online trolling, terrorism planning and recruitment, blatant and unwarranted mudslinging etc. However, there is a phenomenon that worries me most. Kenya is a young democracy. Young as it is, its fragility is pronounced by such vices as tribalism and corruption to say the least. During the 2007 elections, Kenya tore at its hem and more than half the country was up in flames. Food supplies ran short, people turned to beasts, panic and anarchy reigned supreme and thousands of lives were lost. No one was spared in all the madness.

A madness that apportioned blames to almost all sections of society. The politicians blamed the church, the church blamed the media, the media blamed the electoral body and the chain of blame just went on and on. Taking a trip down memory lane to both the 2013 & 2017 general elections, the same panic that has become the norm around election time filled our hearts again. For the believers, they would say “through God’s grace,” not much conflict and violence visited the nation following the 2013 election. The same however, cannot be said about last year’s acrimonious and stretched election period.

Today, the phenomenon of citizen journalism has found true abode amongst Kenyans and there is obvious danger. Internet connectivity has grown and more Kenyans than ever before own smartphones. These gadgets and connectivity have given rise to a new power base within our society, probably too much power than the average citizen actually realizes. If it is actually true that a great deal of the 2007 post-election violence was fanned by hate messages and social media communications, imagine where we are headed post-2017?

Reading into the everyday tone of our social media engagements, there is palpable division, hatred and animosity amongst the people; only hushed by the handshake, but simmering just beneath the surface. The risk of future election violence is as real as day and night. The accompanying risk of death, destruction and stalled development brought about by such evil is equally staring us in the face.

A little History

As Kenyans waited for the results of the 2007 presidential election, observers noticed Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) candidate Raila Odinga’s lead of over one million votes strangely morph into a small margin of victory for the incumbent at the time, Mwai Kibaki. SMSs started flying around as suspicions and tensions grew until December 30, when the now defunct Electoral Commission of Kenya declared Kibaki the winner.

As from January 2008, Kenyans started receiving frightening text messages that urged readers to express their frustrations with the election outcome by attacking other ethnic groups. One such message read, “Fellow Kenyans, the Kikuyu’s have stolen our children’s future...we must deal with them in a way they understand...violence.” In reaction, another read, “No more innocent Kikuyu blood will be shed. We will slaughter them right here in the capital city. For justice, compile a list of Luos you know...we will give you numbers to text this information” (Ofeibea, 2008).

Mass SMS were a communication tool widely used by citizens to spread hatred and violence quickly spread. Today, Kenya’s mobile and internet penetration is among the highest in Africa at 83% and 58% respectively of the 44.35 million population (Sofia, 2016). These figures directly translate to increased citizen journalism; where all things non-factual, unverified and sensational find common harbor. 

The Hard Facts

According to a white paper published by online retailer Jumia, “1.8 million devices sold in 2015 in Kenya were smartphones. This represents 58% of devices sold which in effect represents 112% growth in this segment.” According to the Jumia report which surveyed 576 respondents, the most popular activity on smartphones was chatting and social networking at 78%, calling at 75%, E-mails and online browsing both accounted for 69%. Whereas those figures can augur well in terms of building a knowledge society, it also carries great risk.

The history of 2007/2008 post-election violence is all too clear, all too vivid in Kenyans minds. There was a lot of hue and cry from a large section of the population that felt Kenyans used their increased mobile and social media connectivity to fan and fuel the violence. Whilst that sorry past is silent now, every five years, the season that brings with it all the heat, fanfare, lies, half-truths, false promises, tribal coalitions, bigotry, hate, convenient love and all that makes for that special cocktail that is an election-year promises to meet us again.

With a 112% growth in Smartphone devices and a social media culture of ‘anything goes’, there is glaring risk. The problem is compounded by lack of laws/regulation governing citizen journalism. It is critical we as risk communicators fully comprehend the risk and seek to both inform and influence our people on a culture change.

Towards Risk Perception

Betty H. Morrow notes that risk is a social construction. She adds that, people use interpretive frames to make sense of things and that assessment does not occur in a vacuum, but arises out of social interactions involving values, emotions and power relations. This is a profound statement especially as regards the risk element of election perpetrated violence triggered by citizen journalism. It is not lost in my mind about the many calls for peace and unity that keep lacing every media talk show around this time; a clear indication of the potent risk that lies therein.

Existing research has long suggested that public attitudes are influenced by the media, which play a vital role in shaping understandings of and responses to risk (Eldridge 1999; Hansen 2000; Reilly 1999; Wales and Mythen 2002). That deduction provides us with a basis for an in-depth understanding of news values, an understanding of the expert vs. lay constructions and a critical view of the impact of news framing among citizens.

“Research into the mediation of risk has also been shaped by the pioneering Social Amplification of Risk Framework (SARF). Those following SARF have sought to explore the connections between technical assessments of harm and public perceptions of risk, noting the axial role played by the media in amplifying or attenuating social risks (Kasperson et al. 1988; Kasperson and Kasperson 1996; Pidgeon, Kasperson, and Slovic 2003)”. The author further notes that Social amplification of risk is said to occur at two moments, those of information transfer and public engagement.

To put this into the Kenyan context, it is critical therefore as a risk communicator to take additional notice of this point. For the masses to clearly perceive the risk, special effort should be put to make them understand their power to impact at the point of information transfer and their inability to dictate how the public engages with what they have shared. These along with stories, images and memories of the sorry state that our country went through in the 2007 elections would amplify the nature of the risk.

The horrifying tales of death, destruction and disruption of normal life should form key risk perception messages. To paraphrase Kasperson, such an effort ensures that various understandings of risk are thus constructed and processed by individuals and social amplification stations such as scientific experts and the news media are used to create necessary secondary effects.

So, just how exactly does the sociocultural context in which risk takes place relate to citizen journalism? It is not in doubt that news-making is essentially affected by norms, values and behaviors. While this remains true even today, the only thing that has changed is the level of participation of the citizen in both creating, producing and disseminating the news. “The opportunities presented by ‘citizen journalism’ need to be understood as part of a wider transference from media as vertical and hierarchical to a mixed situation which includes engagement with horizontal and interactive platforms.

It has been commonly argued that the citizen journalism ‘movement’ began in the US during the 1988 presidential election (Dvorkin 2007; Meyer 2007)”. It is worth noting that in Kenya, it landed much later and that citizen journalism is not entirely a bad thing. From a positive vantage point, citizen journalism can add to the plurality of discourses circulating about hazardous events, provide an alternate agenda from mainstream news and bring into question the political and cultural realities that underpin risk incidents. My only concern though is given Kenya’s past experience and reading into the usual political content, tone, and frequency of negativity spewing from our citizen journalists, there is plenty to worry about.

Supporting body of evidence

 A few months after the dust settled on the violence that followed the divisive 2007 elections, scholars, researchers, and media outlets all dug in into the unprecedented happenings. In his paper, “Digitally Networked Technology in Kenya’s 2007–2008 Post-Election Crisis,” Joshua Goldstein and Juliana Rotich conclude that “in the Kenyan context, whether aspiring to promote an ethnic-based hate crime or a global human rights campaign, the Internet and mobile phones have lowered the barriers to participation and increased opportunities for many-to-many communication.” Clay Shirky gets to the heart of the matter: “The current change, in one sentence, is this: most of the barriers to group action have collapsed, and without those barriers, we are free to explore new ways of gathering together and getting things done.”

BBC also weighed in on the matter with their policy briefing policy paper titled The Kenyan 2007 elections and their aftermath: “the role of media and communication. They concluded that “Kenyan society and democracy is changing and the media is shaping and mediating those changes to a very substantial extent. Development policy has in general been uninterested in media’s role in such changes. We believe that the Kenyan crisis demonstrates that such disinterest cannot be sustained in the future without seriously undermining other development efforts. There is much that can be done by donors and other development actors to support media in countries such as Kenya. The suggested policy conclusions and actions summarized at the beginning of this paper are just some of them”.

“Much more is needed to evaluate the nature and quality of audience participation in the cases when it is fostered. In “best practices” cases, an analysis of the structural changes in work organization, routines and professional values that have enabled relevant participation will be useful to assess to what extent participatory journalism can become a widespread practice in the media and what can be its consequences for the quality of journalism and the public sphere.” Those were the concluding sentiments of Steve Paulussen et al in his paper “Doing It Together: Citizen Participation in the Professional News Making Process.” So much has been written, a lot more conversations held in mainstream media and countless conferences have been convened to deliberate on the new media phenomena and how citizens engage with it especially around elections. This is only evidence of the obvious; risk is written all over this phenomenon. So how do we play our role?

Moving to Action

After all said and done, eventually Kenyans have to come alive to the hazards of this phenomenon and turn their outrage of the ugly past into something meaningful. The challenge is for me to play my role and spark change in the people. The twin elements of risk communication and management are urgent to say the least.

“Central to both processes is knowledge about the targeted constituency and how it currently understands and feels about the hazard in question (Plattner 2005)”. A community based approach can prove essential in changing this risk related behavior. In Kenya for example, there were hotspot centers where the violence occurred. A probable approach would be for civil society, government and local leaders etc to organize groups of youths and take them through expert mediated workshops.

Films can be produced that capture the real incidences of 2007 and these are shown both at public spaces using mobile cinema and encouraging the locals to attend smaller intimate sessions where they can get to ask questions and learn more about the risk of election violence. Information to these groups of people is of utmost importance since they are the least educated and they are always on the front line in the conflicts.

They need information and education. This can be one of the messages and channels for sharing with this particular audience. In communicating the risk, it is critical to structure specific messages to specific audiences. “Regardless of the objective or goal, messages need to be developed according to the socioeconomic and cultural contexts in which they will be received. These affect how issues are framed or defined, how various aspects are weighted, and how interactions are planned (Vaughan 1995). “By including too much content, or flattening content to make it more acceptable to all potential recipients, the message may become ineffective or may not appeal sufficiently to action” (Vanhorenbeech 2008).

The community driven process should engage the stakeholders from the beginning to make them feel part of whatever final product they will be consuming. Involvement always promotes buy-in. The danger of expert interventions that do not factor in feedback, feelings and beliefs of the intended audiences in most cases are always bound to fail. “Partnerships are essential to creating the human relations needed to damp the social amplification of minor risks – as well as to generate concern where it is warranted” (Fischhoff 1995). Enlisting the support of other credible groups and institutions as partners is a wise strategy.

         Where i Stand!

It is clear that change is here with us. The transition from a centralized media to a more dispersed media has happened and there is a new dawn. Yet still, the lines of triumphs or flaws very much remain blurry. While most will see it as a revolutionary good, a critical analysis might tend to present a different picture for instance as regards such sensitive processes as elections.

Personally, whilst the ability to communicate and respond instantaneously through mediated forms is a wonderful thing, it should not be upheld as a virtue in its own right. The fundamental issue is about the quality of information exchange and its subsequent ability to promote shared understandings and peaceful co-existence rather than the speed at which information travels.

The drive to mediate risk incidents with haste does not ultimately mean that we are able to understand them better. This remains the fundamental challenge for all stakeholders involved in the communication of risk. How do you communicate early, often and fully?