// 02.24.2009 at 4:46 pm //

Election violence hatched in the Kenyan blogosphere

In everyday life, people hardly think of the gadgets they use to keep in touch with family and friends. They take them for granted because they’re simply everywhere.

The mobile phone, though a late entrant in Africa (Kenya’s first mobile network providers were launched in 2000), has become an integral part of the daily lives of at least 18 million Kenyans.

However, beyond simply helping in keeping in touch with friends and family, it’s obvious that the mobile phone and the Internet are powerful tools of what experts call many-to-many communication in crisis and emergency situations. This is because they offer a viral means of communication through the use of SMS and chat rooms in a back-and-forth way that has no barriers. Thus, the information flow is faster and multidimensional.

Networked lives

The new media is now also increasingly being used to shape not only personal and professional lives, but, as seen in the case of Kenya’s 2007 general elections , political lives as well.

As the presidential election results trickled in, text messages started making the rounds, saying that the incumbent President Mwai Kibaki was using the Electoral Commission of Kenya to rig the results.

Soon, tension in the country was palpable, considering the intensity of ethnic-based politics in Kenya. For almost two decades, the elections had been associated with violence, especially in the Rift Valley Province. In 2007 however, the tension escalated as mobile phones and the Internet were used to say what the mainstream media was not saying.

Political discussions took an ethnic slant and political partisanship on a scale never seen before. Meanwhile it is believed that some politicians were also running their own teams of so-called ‘Internet- soldiers’, who posted all sorts of partisan opinions, of course anonymously.

Election violence in Nairobi. (CC by-nc-sa; Photograph by ActionPix - Maruko's)

Faceless soldiers

According to research by experts, it is said that over 600 blogs were created shortly before the 2007 elections. Such blogs discussed politics in a way meant to challenge the mainstream media. Some were also used for online campaigns to promote awareness about human rights violations in the light of election violence, like ushahidi.com.

Unfortunately, some blogs also promoted hate speeches and spread political propaganda. Anonymous users flooded forums and blogs with comments that expressed their opinions — and not necessarily in a civil manner.

For instance, Mashada.com, cited then as the leading Kenyan online community for the number of people who visited the site, was so overwhelmed with divisive and hostile messages, that moderator David Kobia had to shut it down, recognising that civil discourse was impossible.

But on a positive note, the site was soon redirected to a new site, ihavenotribe.com, which, as the name suggests, was used to spread reconciliation among communities.

Free flow of information

It has been argued that Internet penetration  Kenya (which stands at four per cent of the population) is too small for blogs to have any meaningful impact on society.

However, the middle class, being the most connected economic and social group, is the purveyor of information from bottom-up and vice-versa. Being the biggest consumer and disseminator of information, this class used mobile phones and blogs to shape political opinions, even to the point of spreading rumors, hate speeches and fear.

The new media did not, at any point, consider the mainstream media

— especially TV and newspapers. It operated in a freer environment and was open and very critical.

This is well documented in the report ‘Digitally Networked Technology in Kenya’s 2007-2008 Post-Election Crisis’ by Joshua Goldstein and Juliana Rotich of the Internet and Democracy Project, a research initiative at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, which investigates the impact of the Internet on civic engagement and democratic processes.

Case study

The report cites how the new media became a critical tool of reporting during the post-election violence in Kenya, when Ory Okolloh came up with a model using Google Earth. It showed in great detail where the worst of the violence occurred. He teamed up with David Kobia and Erik Hersman, two technologists with roots in Kenya.

The reports says, “Leading a small group of designers, they designed and launched Ushahidi.com. Ushahidi is a mashup of two Internet applications used to relay information. The design teams combined Google Maps, which allows users to zoom in and view satellite images of Kenya, with a tool for users, via mobile phone or Internet browser, to report incidents of violence on the map, add photos, video, and written content that document where and when violence occurs.”

The site was created to give a comprehensive report of what was happening on the ground, with direct information from those in the localities where riots, rape, looting and other acts of violence were taking place.

Positive effects

Just as human rights activists used digital tools to voice their concerns, so did citizen journalists, who used blogs to challenge the mainstream media and government reports.

The fact that citizen journalists change the media landscape in developed countries with readily available Internet access is a given. However, the power and influence of bloggers is particularly noteworthy in Kenya, where only four per cent of

Kenyans have regular Internet access.

Kenyan bloggers became a critical part of the information flow in the country, starting from the three-day ban on live broadcasts, when it is reported that the web traffic from within Kenya shot through the roof. The influence grew further when radio broadcasters began to read entries from influential bloggers over the airwaves, helping them reach not 5 per cent, but 95 per cent of the Kenya population.

Blogger’s world

According to Goldstein and Rotich, Kenya has perhaps the richest blogging tradition in sub-Saharan Africa, which made their use even more effective and readily available during the election.

Also, mobile phones were widely used to send pictures of violent post-election attacks. These pictures, circulated outside the mainstream media, carried neither credit lines nor captions. They were meant to shock and arouse anger, which they did, to a big extent, creating a cycle of violence that soon engulfed almost half the country. Mobile phone pictures of families running away from violence flashpoints became the talking point. The mainstream media was out of the loop.

Mass SMS tools are the cheapest means for organising this type of systematic and public campaign of mob violence.

Without any organised structure or deliberate motive, citizen journalism was made possible by new media technology. The Internet was also used to send pictures that aroused anger in citizens and civil society, who in turn put pressure on the ruling class to find a solution.

In Kenya, the same new media too played a remarkable role in putting pressure on the political elite to reach a political solution.

Credit:

Internet & Democracy Case Study Series >> Digitally Networked Technology in Kenya’s 2007-2008 Post-Election

Youtube video of SMS used to incite people to violence

Tweet This Post 

// Tagged Case Studies, blogs, Elections, hate speech, Kenya, SMS, violence