OLUOCH: State should address rising cases of polls disinformation

The growth of the Internet in the last two decades has helped increase political and civic engagement and scrutiny.

Additionally, the growth of a digital economy in Kenya has further led to the emergence of a vibrant online community with 89.7 per cent of the population having access to the Internet.

Globally and in particular in Kenya, Twitter has proven to be the perfect outlet for citizens to express themselves.

It has been a key platform used in popular movements and has displayed the most lively and insightful political conversations.

It has been used as a channel of communication between the government, emergency respondents, and the public to address reported corruption, and media misrepresentations, and to share humour and messages of solidarity.

Others have also focused on the influence of hashtags on public opinion and the participatory playfulness and entertainment around memes.

At present, Twitter is one of the social media platforms that are vastly providing colossal income-generating opportunities to the youth—especially in Kenya.

This is among the advantages that whenever you approach a Kenyan youth and ask him/her, they will tell you for free. Twitter earns most of them a living.

But earning a living from Twitter will entirely depend on the number of followers you have or how well-connected you are.

According to research by KEPIOS carried out in early 2022, part of the report showed that Twitter alone has over 1.35 million users in Kenya.

Of course, from this figure, the youth occupy the largest fraction thus making so many products or information reach so many people all at once.

Another study on social media consumption in Kenya revealed that the main reason most Kenyans are active on social media is for news, politics, and entertainment, adding that Twitter is mostly used by those of 26 to 35 years.

Twitter registered so many users, especially after the advent of Covid-19, when studies were interrupted and people were laid off from wherever they were working.

Since everybody was at home, social media -and especially Twitter- was everyone’s to-go-to platform for killing boredom.

Who wouldn’t want to laugh out loud from the ever-funny memes by Kenyans on Twitter (KoT)?

Due to the massive number of users on Twitter, marketing agencies have now turned to push their products on Twitter.

This way, they will of course need several  Twitter users with a good following to chip in and help.

In their post, this marketing newbie will incorporate hashtags or keywords that will enable the post to reach a wider audience easily.

Engagements will also be built since two-way communication will be developed between the customers and the service providers thus easily getting their feedback.

Despite Twitter being a source of income, these incomes are earned in different forms.

Whereas some earn from publicising or marketing products, some also earn from being sourced by politicians or some people with bad intentions.

From as low as Sh500, an influence can get paid to soil the name of a political opponent, and to some extent end up building up conversations that polarise the whole nation and end up curtailing our nation’s love, peace, and unity.

If you ask them, they will answer you, “Poverty is the common enemy?” But even if poverty is the common enemy, does it call for you to stoop that low to betray your conscience?

Kenya has a well-organised disinformation industry that thrives on critical events like elections, and bill debates, to earn revenue.

Kenyan politicians hire social media influencers, who create additional pseudo accounts with large numbers of followers, to use their accounts to steer civic discourse to their benefit and target young people with disinformation campaigns.

So many politicians have always been so obsessed with achieving relevance and the best platform they can do so is on Twitter, with the youth especially university students, being their propagators!

During the electioneering period, a lot of misinformation was consumed online about the election process and the results.

This caused some uncalled-for anxiety and tension among different supporters. If not well-managed, these vices will come to curtail the Nation's peace.  

It’s so sad that a simple hashtag and Sh500 payment is enough to tear apart the whole nation and drown everyone in the sea of conflicts.

Even though regrets come after, we can’t just sit down and watch as our peace is being traded for someone’s ill motives. Something must be done.

We need these social media platforms like Twitter to inform Kenyan users about how they will use algorithms to spot hate speech and election-related disinformation; how they will foster relationships with civil society to fact-check content and finally, how they’ll help Kenyans get accurate information about where to vote.

Conclusively, relevant authorities should be constantly alert and monitor such platforms to prevent such hateful hashtags from seeing the light of the day.

We dare these politicians to come straight to the grass-roots level, tell us their manifestos, engage with us and intellectually provoke us rather than misusing the youths to soil their opponents. 

Student 

 

Edited by Kiilu Damaris

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