By PAIGE AARHUS paarhus@ke.nationmedia.com
Posted Monday, August 29 2011 at 18:00
Posted Monday, August 29 2011 at 18:00
IN SUMMARY
- By remaining blissfully ignorant of the Twitter and Facebook social networking technology, Kenyan politicians could be plotting their irrelevance because they are cutting themselves off from a generation of voters that has brought down regimes using mobile phones
At first glance, it looks like an official Twitter account. @MwaiKibaki has a picture of the President’s face, the Kenyan flag as a background, and thousands of followers.
But the fictitious Twitter account is aimed at ridiculing the President, which is why we will ignore its contents.
The account has only been active for eight months, but already boasts 6,500 followers — as many as Raila Odinga, and more than the official accounts of Peter Kenneth and Kalonzo Musyoka.
In fact, @MwaiKibaki is the only Kenyan “politician” who counts American President Barack Obama as a follower.
The popularity of this farcical account indicates a growing trend in Kenya: social media is shaping modern politics more than ever before, from targeting corruption to influencing public opinion.
The lesson seems clear — if Kenyan politicians don’t take control of their online image and engage with the public, someone else will do it for them. And if the government has something to hide, the Internet will find it, expose it, and maybe even make fun of it.
Before the 2007 elections, political rallies were the main platform politicians used to connect with their constituents.
In the past five years, however, Kenya’s political landscape has changed.
Internet usage more than doubled in 2010, according to the Ministry of Information, jumping to 7.5 million users from three million in 2009.
Opera’s June 2011 State of the Mobile Web report ranks Facebook as the most popular website in the country, with an estimated 1,115,940 users as of June 2011. Twitter ranked eighth on the same list.
“Social media influences a lot of people. Something as simple as a joke or sarcasm can be damaging to a public figure because they cannot control it or remove the message,” says Mr Jacob Ayienda, an independent social media consultant based in Nairobi.
According to Mr Ayienda, social media is growing in leaps and bounds. Facebook is the most universally popular website, but Twitter is becoming more popular among Kenya’s middle class.
“Twitter users comprise the majority of workers. Most of them are in Nairobi, but they also influence the people at home in the rural areas, and politicians want to target these audiences. Facebook is popular because it allows you to share more, but Twitter is easier than Facebook because you have only 140 characters, so you write more specific and direct messages,” he says.
Mr Ayienda estimates that Kenyans were posting over 10,000 tweets daily in 2010, and says that number has gone up in the past year.
“It’s changing the way we think and talk about current affairs in the country.”
Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms are making an impact on politics across the continent. Part of their popularity stems from the fact that they allow the average citizen a chance to instantly share their views, and crucial information, with a much larger audience. The other part is that it is nearly impossible to control what is said and posted online.
“The smart politicians are the ones who can capitalise on the Web 2.0 movement,” says Dr Joshua Kivuva, a political science professor at the University of Nairobi.
“Politicians here are ‘old school’. Even when there are massive changes taking place, they don’t move on them. The next media will be social media,” he adds.
Dr Kivuva admits to resisting social media himself — he does not own a Twitter account, and tries not to spend too much time on Facebook — but says he would do things differently if he were running for office.
“I would hire a team devoted to maintaining this type of online presence because it is so important.”
The scholar sees huge potential for social media. Although 70 per cent of Kenyans are under 35 years and net-savvy, he points to the fact that many young people are not registered voters.
“When this changes and the youth have voting cards, then you will see the real power of social media. When people start voting based on what they see online, that will be the huge change. The main influence we see right now is how people perceive politicians. Public and online personas are becoming intertwined,” he says.
Dr Kivuva points to the example of MP Peter Kenneth, whose recent trip to the United States was buoyed by constant online updates on Twitter and Facebook. When he hosted an event at the Embassy Suites in Minnesota, it took only a few clicks of the keyboard to announce it to 4,734 followers. When enraptured audience members tweeted their support afterwards, Mr Kenneth’s Twitter account responded.
“The persona you project is important. You need to be someone who is not just professional, but who can reach out to people,” says Dr Kivuva.
MP Martha Karua has also harnessed the power of social networking and keeps her audience constantly engaged with tweets and Facebook updates, including pictures of her recent graduation, messages about political issues, congratulations to Kenyan sports teams, and event announcements.
Her strategy has paid off: with 25,171 Twitter followers and 141,993 Facebook fans, Ms Karua is leading the pack when it comes to political social media in Kenya.
“Social media cannot make a politician popular or unpopular, but it can allow politicians to capitalise on their good image, or try to repair a bad image, by engaging with their audience,” says Dr Kivuva.
It is not just public personas and popular opinion that are being affected by social media.
Mr Erik Hersman is a social media pioneer who recognises the transformative power of instant, interactive mass communication.
Days after the 2007 election, Mr Hersman and a team of fellow Kenyans created Ushahidi, an online platform that allowed users to instantly report on trouble in their region. The resulting witness reports gave the public a much clearer picture of the extent of the violence.
“We spent three days putting together a most rudimentary website, but it opened things up in a way no one expected,” he says.
After that, a separate platform, Uchaguzi, was set up during the 2010 constitutional referendum. Thousands of users made reports of electoral mismanagement, and the Ushahidi platform has since been used to cover everything from the earthquake in Haiti to the BP oil spill. This year alone, more than 240,000 individual users have made reports to Ushahidi.
The programme is near-identical to Twitter, except for one crucial element: Mr Hersman’s platform does not require user names or passwords, making it possible for the most remote rural citizens to use it from their mobiles anonymously.
“We look at it from an emerging markets perspective. If you’re living in rural Kenya and all you have is a cheap phone, and you can still send reports and receive alerts, then it’s doing what it is supposed to,” he says.
It is all part of a bigger social media wave change, says Mr Hersman, who wonders why more Kenyan politicians have not got on board.
“We’re seeing much more political activity now on Facebook, but I don’t know why politicians here haven’t been more active. It seems as though the only people who aren’t using these platforms are people who don’t know how to use them, or people who have a lot to hide.”
Politicians in Kenya ignore social media at their peril, adds Mr Hersman, and risk being left in the dust if they do not jump on board and engage with their online audience.
“The reason politicians ignored blogs in 2007, and why they’ll avoid Facebook and Twitter in 2012, is that they don’t know how to use them and they can’t control them. These platforms have truly democratised politics in Kenya,” he says.
For the 2012 elections, Mr Hersman and his team plan to roll out the Uchaguzi platform across Kenya, using more than 2,000 election monitors to verify anonymous reports. Combined with SMS alerts, tweets, and Facebook status updates, he foresees a much more transparent future for Kenyan politics.
“You can’t unring the bell. Once there’s a wave of popular support behind something, it’s impossible to stop it. We learnt that lesson from Egypt… Social media gets a lot of attention, but it really comes down to people, in the end.”
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