The demonstrations that have rocked Kenya in recent weeks have led to a new perception of political discourse in the country. The youth led demonstrations have brought to the forefront the general discontent that citizens of this country have with their government. The following essay is a meditation on the role of social media fueling the protests and suggests possible paths that will make this struggle successful and create an atmosphere of political dialogue between the government and the people.
Youth leading these protests is nothing new. In Africa, young people have historically been on the forefront of change. During the struggle for independence, the Mau Mau was mainly comprised of young people. My late grandfather told me that he joined the struggle in 1949 when he was 25 years old. In South Africa, the fight against apartheid was mainly led by young people and students, culminating in the Soweto uprising of 1966, which was immortalized in song by Miriam Makeba in Soweto Blues where she poetically observed that “the children were flying, bullets dying…” (Makeba) Kenya’s second liberation, which led to the repeal of section 2A and the return of multiparty politics was spearheaded by young politicians and university students. As such, Gen Z are doing what was done by generations before them.
However, this time social media has been critical in mobilizing the turnouts that have shocked every member of Kenyan society. Political pundits of older generations have openly claimed that they have never seen such demonstrations despite the turbulent history of this country. One possible explanation for this is because the anger of hoi polloi has never been this amplified. The reason behind this amplification is social media. Apart from the obvious communication and logistical advantages of social media such sharing schedules and meet-up locations, social media has also played a critical role in fanning the anger witnessed in towns across the country. It’s interesting to note that the events of the 23rd-27th of June were shared under the banner “Seven Days of Rage”. I think there’s more here than meets the eye. While it indicates the ire the people have against a government that constantly ignored them, the wording hints at the underlying nature of communication on social media platforms.
Social media platforms have been documented to lay more emphasis and amplify negative emotions. In his book Zucked: Waking Up to The Facebook Catastrophe Roger McNamee writes “…inflammatory posts work better at reaching huge audiences within Facebook and other platforms” (McNamee). An inflaming word choice makes the audience outrageous, anxious or both, which in turn drives up the engagement. Outraged users return to the site to check for updates more frequently and tend to “share more content to let other people what they should also be outraged about” (McNamee). As a result, the message gets to a much wider audience consequently driving up turn-out, especially the demographic that happens to be heavy social media users. With this in mind, it can be argued that not everyone on the streets was motivated by a newly awakened political awareness.
So far so good. The demonstrations have achieved the main goal they set out to achieve. Thanks to social media, the country is now paying attention to young people.. Jaron Lanier paints a very clear picture what is now happening; “A group of hip, young, educated people gets into a social media platform first, because these things come out of the hip, young, educated world. They’re idealistic…They sincerely want the world to be better. They meet early successes, often spectacular, ecstatic successes…” (Lanier)
However, social media is a double edged sword and can sabotage everything achieved this far. Since social media algorithms tend to drive up engagement by promoting negative and inflammatory posts it has the “unintended effect of lining idealists up so that they can be targeted with shitposts that statistically make them just a little more irritable, a little less able to communicate with dissimilar people, so a little more isolated, and after all that, a little less able to tolerate moderate or pragmatic politics” (Lanier). The problem is compounded by the presence of filter bubbles where social media algorithms “feed each of us a steady diet of content similar to what has engaged us most in the past” (McNamee). This explains why President Ruto’s refusal to sign the Finance Bill into law is not being hyped as a battle fought and won.
The only way to salvage the situation is to pop the bubble. We need to be cognizant of the limits of social media taking the events of recent history such as the Arab Spring and Sudan as examples of what happens when the people rely heavily on social media platforms to carry their revolutionary message. However, this does not mean abandoning the use of these platforms, but rather using them as tools to better political engagement in the country. For instance, social media can be used to create awareness and offer a platform for virtual public participation to marshal the involvement of young people in politics. Since the constitution of Kenya provides for the participation of the people in the creation of laws, using online platforms for this purpose will provide a wider audience. Mistakes can be identified and corrected earlier, and there would be no need to go to the streets. Such participations will have an impact compared to those that came before because now the politicians know what happens if they ignore this crop of Kenyans. As such, we will create an atmosphere of dialogue and the evident chasm between the government and the governed will perhaps be bridged.
In conclusion, social media played a critical role in successfully organizing the protests that led to the withdrawal of the Finance Bill 2024. Due to the inherent architecture of algorithms that run social media platforms, the anger of the people was amplified in a way never witnessed before in Kenya. Although it led to the success of the demonstrations, not all protesters were politically aware. Despite this shortcoming, social media can be used to improve political engagement in the country and bridge the gap between the people and their government.
References
Lanier, Jaron. Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2018. E-Book.
Makeba, Miriam. "Soweto Blues." Welela. By S. Todd H. Masekela. New York, 1989. Compact Disc.
McNamee, Roger. Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catatrophe. New York: Penguin Press, 2019. EPUB.
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