On June 23, at the annual Global Media Forum, the 11th edition of the Best of Online Activism Awards took place. The bloggers’ awards were part of an annual event that brings media researchers and practitioners from across the world to Bonn, Germany. No Kenyan blog was nominated. In Nairobi, exceptional Kenyan bloggers had already received their prizes at the Bloggers Association of Kenya Awards on May 2.
The Bake awards are in their fourth year. Yet blogging seems to still occupy an in-between state, not fully integrated into the media landscape as is the case at the Global Media Forum, but far too evolved to be considered a side show to the ‘bona fide’ media.
In fact, the Kenyan blogosphere is a long way from its humble beginnings, when it was considered a place for personal musings and personal journaling. The first Kenyan blog www.mentalacrobatics.com was set up by Daudi Were in 2003. Today, Bake reports that there are an estimated 15,000 registered blogs in Kenya. Some 3,000 of them are active blogs by Kenyans on Wordpress, Blogger and Tumblr platforms.
Tracy Gesare is a young, upcoming lifestyle and entertainment blogger. Her evolution as a blogger exemplifies the rapid transformation in the blogger’s community in Kenya. An undergraduate communications student at Daystar University in Nairobi, Gesare started blogging at www.twocents.blogspot.com in 2012. Her tagline then was “how I’m feeling, what I’m thinking, what I’m doing, what I wish I was doing, where I am, where I want to be...” Within three short years, Gesare has re-branded herself as www.tracygesare.com, identified her niche and is thinking long term.
“I started blogging as a hobby. Now I realise that I can do this as a paying career that pays the rent and puts food on the table. I’ve seen many bloggers do this for a living,” she says.
Gesare is currently participating in a blogging apprenticeship under the Coca-Cola Billion Reasons to Believe initiative, and discovering that building any career — blogging included — takes time, determination and consistency.
Multiple roles of a blogger
The blogger has the multiple roles of writer, editor, publisher all wrapped up in one, without the benefit or hindrances of oversight, depending on how one looks at it. This is one of the things that distinguishes the blogger from the mainstream journalist, and which comes with its own set of disadvantages.
For a blogger still trying to find his or her feet, the lack of the endorsement through a formal editorial process contributes to Gesare’s doubt. “Sometimes I just don’t trust my content enough to publish it. I’m a perfectionist, and I want my content to make sense to the audience, I don’t want to ramble on and perpetuate hearsay, “she explains. Her experience with sources also proves that independent bloggers are yet to come of age as legitimate stakeholders in the media industry. “When you introduce yourself to sources as a blogger, their response to your interview request is likely to be less enthusiastic than when you mention the name of a major daily,” she says matter-of-factly.
It’s not only about legitimacy, but also about having a function that supports fact checking and ensures that ethical and legal requirements are met.
While the Constitution of Kenya (2010) provides for the freedom of expression, including the right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas, this freedom is not absolute. It excludes actions that amount to propaganda for war, incitement to violence, hate speech, advocacy for hatred through ethnic incitement, vilification of others or incitement to cause harm, or discrimination.
Ethical standards for blogosphere
Kennedy Kachwanya is a technology blogger at www.kachwanya.com and the chairperson of Bake. He acknowledges that ignorance of the law has resulted in the arrest and prosecution of some bloggers, and adds that it has contributed to friction between bloggers and the public on the one hand, and with the media fraternity on the other.
“The question today is no longer who bloggers are and what they do, but how to regulate them,” he says. Kachwanya is talking about calls made by the Media Council of Kenya and the media fraternity to regulate their actions. According to him, these unrealistic calls emanate from people who are displeased with the actions of specific political and gossip bloggers. “In my opinion, it shouldn’t be about whether they wrote something one likes or dislikes. The question is whether the allegations are based in facts.” Kachwanya argues that legal mechanisms already exist to deal with defamation and slander.
An accountant by profession, Kachwanya got into blogging as a hobby and has since converted it into a full time job. In 2011, he came up with the idea to build a community where bloggers could organise themselves to represent the interests of their members, build their capacity and claim a legitimate position on Kenya’s media landscape.
With the support of well-established bloggers, Kachwanya organised the first meeting in February 2011. Coming at a turbulent time, when the government had experienced hacking and its own dose of Wikileaks drama, he says that the association was not received well at first.
“It took about a year before the registrar understood that the association would help to develop standards and ethics for the upcoming sector, and to organise young people online,” he recalls. One of the reasons for establishing mechanisms for self-regulation was to pre-empt government regulation.
Association members commit to adhering to a code of conduct. They are also trained on the technical aspects of blogging, production of quality content and the internet and law. “Ignorance is no excuse and our members should understand that if they break the law, they will be prosecuted. For us, the best approach is to build a community that understands what is right and what is wrong,” he says.
The training also serves as an opportunity to recruit more members to the association, which has already helped to set up chapters in Mombasa, Kisumu and Nakuru and is planning to set up university chapters. The Bake awards are an annual highlight on the association’s calendar, and this year, there were 1,800 entries, the largest since the awards were launched.
Chance to tell our own story
The 18 entry categories are perhaps a sign of the diversity of content being provided by Kenyans online. This, according to Kachwanya, is one of the unique spaces that the blogosphere can effectively occupy. “Foreign media, which most Kenyans read, has a tendency of distorting the reality on the ground to suit prevailing perceptions,” he says.
Locally, blogging can be seen as a tool to extend the capacity of mainstream journalism. Gesare explains that rather than seeing them as parallel platforms, journalists can use their blogs to complement their storytelling and enhance their pitch.
“A freelancer can showcase his or her work and publish stories that may have been rejected by editors, or to write follow-up stories that they started in mainstream media,” she explains, adding that her blog has already enabled her to successfully pitch her work.
It’s more and more about the audience and the content. Whereas bloggers may not have the same newsroom pressures from their editor, those who perceive themselves as writing for an external audience and not only themselves, have to be sensitive to the information needs of this audience. They must be consistent with their publishing.
“Your audience must know that they’ll get new content at a predictable time, just the way they go out every morning to buy a newspaper from the newsstand,” Gesare says.
Growth of internet a boon for bloggers
Indeed, the rise of digital tools and social media in Kenya has seen an unprecedented increase in the participation of audiences in developing stories, shaping local narratives and mobilising action.
According to the Communications Authority, there are 16.4 million Kenyans who have dedicated internet connections either at home, at work or through fully enabled phones.
Some 21.4 million have access to the internet. Statistics also show that there are 2.1 million Twitter users and 4.3 million Facebook users. Mobile penetration is 82.6 per cent.
This technological transformation is clearly influencing audience participation. Protests against land grabbing at Lang’ata Primary School, the ‘my dress my choice’ campaign against public stripping women in Nairobi, Kenyans for Kenya and a host of other events are proof that the online space is influencing Kenya’s narrative. Some of the stories started online, were given momentum by social media discussions, and were eventually picked up and amplified by mainstream media.
Online advertising
Another important factor related to the growing online audience is the potential for online advertising. According to the Kenyan Entertainment and Media Outlook: 2013-2017 report by PWC, the value of the online Kenyan advertising market stood at Sh165 billion by the end of 2013, and is projected to rise to over Sh301 billion by 2018.
The online community in Kenya received a further boost when in March 2014, the Ministry of Information, Communication and Technology and the Office of the Attorney General drafted amendments requiring state organisations to advertise on online platforms to reach more people and save money.
Active bloggers with clear monetisation strategies and large audiences are already exploiting the expanded internet access to secure regular income through placement of banner advertisements, Google Adwords and Adsense, commissioned product reviews and social media campaigns.
Those who are not yet established are receiving support from Bake, whose chairperson affirms that the internet’s potential to create jobs is unlimited. “We have many individual bloggers who are not structured as companies. We’ve been able to manage them within the community, linking them with companies and helping them to reach their potential.”
On June 16, Fred Matiangi, the Cabinet Secretary for ICT, launched Bake’s ‘The State of Blogging & Social Media in Kenya 2015 Report’ at the Nailab innovation hub. It was the first ever such report.
The launch was attended by a cross-section of people, among them representatives of the Ministry of ICT, the Kenya ICT Authority, Kenya Media Council, activists. For the association of bloggers, it signifies that the convergence of purpose may be taking longer to achieve here at home, but it is coming for sure.
