Participatory Media Cultures: Virality,Humour,and Online Political Contestations in Kenya

Abstract

The increase in access to affordable mobile technologies has created an interesting, sometimes complicated, relationship between Internet users and the Kenyan government. On the one hand, the latter is committed to building information and communications technology infrastructure and encouraging technological innovation. On the other, citizens are becoming digitally literate, civically engaged, and more likely to hold the government accountable. The article seeks to discuss varied forms of citizen engagement in the era of Internet viral cultures, ranging from (1) the use of social media for online protest, characterised by political contestation and fleeting outbursts of anger and backlash in the Twittersphere, to (2) the appropriation of protest messages into humorous viral memes (often oversimplified, ignoring the complexities of the situation and more focused on humour rather than underlying core problems). Four select hashtags during the 2017 Kenyan elections are analysed as frames for collective action within the context of playful participation and “spreadable” media.

Introduction

The introduction of the Internet in Kenya was initially met with hostility and a subsequent ban on its use in the civil service sector until 1999 (Mureithi, 2017). During that period, the Internet was embraced by a small group of technologists, foreign aid agencies, and non-governmental organisations (Riess, 2015). Things took a turn for the better when the government released the Telecommunications and Postal Sector Policy Guidelines in 1997, recognising information and communications technology’s (ICT’s) contributions to development, and later passed the Kenya Information and Communications Act (1998 [a new telecom law establishing a multi-operator environment]) – followed shortly thereafter by official recognition of the Internet (Mureithi, 2017). The Act of 1998 marked the beginning of media liberalisation, by opening up competition, limiting media concentration and cross-media ownership, and by moving Internet services from a state-controlled monopoly to the private sector (Ndavula and Mueni, 2014).

In 2006, with a vision for a prosperous ICT-driven Kenyan society, the National ICT policy was launched. Its mission was to improve the livelihoods of Kenyans through the provision of affordable, accessible, efficient, reliable, and secure ICT services (National ICT Policy, 2006: 1). Thereafter followed the launching of an extensive roll-out programme with the intention of bringing ICT services to rural villages in Kenya, hoping to stimulate the development of local content and local applications (apps) (Ndavula and Mueni, 2014; Omondi, 2006). Since then, the sector has witnessed rapid technological advancements, leading to the review of the policy in 2019 in order to provide a proactive framework that is in line with current technological dynamics (National ICT Policy, 2019). Kenya has sought to position itself as the major technology hub in sub-Saharan Africa, often referred to as the “Silicon Savanna.” The government has fully embraced ICT as a driver of socio-economic growth and established agencies to mainstream e-government services (Mureithi, 2017; Tully and Ekdale, 2014).

Since the completion of the fibre-optic network in 2009, the number of Kenyans using the Internet has risen steadily amid increased access and popularity (Bing, 2015; Tully and Ekdale, 2014). Kenya is among the places with the highest Internet penetration in Africa, and is considered one of the Kenya, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Ghana, and South Africa (KINGS) countries – a term coined by Osiakwan (2017) to refer to the states leading technological innovation on the continent. Through increased access to the Internet and with the proliferation of mobile devices, audiences are now able to take part in the creation of user-generated content, engage in online debates, and connect with others globally (Willems and Mano, 2016). Social media today offers narratives by citizen reporters and digital activists that are more diverse than the ones presented by traditional forms of media such as television, radio, and newspaper (Makinen and Kuira, 2008). Twitter has become the favoured online meeting place for young, urban Kenyans due to the platform’s short-text format and easily shareable memes (Tully and Ekdale, 2014). The goal of this article is to add to the emerging body of literature on humour as a form of activism, and how it serves to drive what Jenkins et al. (2013) refer to as “spreadable” media and subsequent mobilisation for collective action.

Literature Review

One of the earliest forms of digital content created by Internet users in Kenya was the blog, which can be traced back to 2003 – when the Kenya Bloggers Webring (KBW) was launched by Daudi Were (Bloggers Association of Kenya [BAKE], 2015). The KBW used Really Simple Syndication (RSS) to pick up the online feeds of writers, which enabled Kenyans to get updates from bulletin boards about events happening both locally and internationally (Kaigwa, 2017). Mashada.com was a front runner in blogging, and was one of Kenya’s most popular online forums at the time. In January 2008, during the political crisis still ongoing from the previous year that had been triggered by a disputed presidential election, David Kobia, the founder of Mashada.com, temporarily shut the website down. He argued that the amount of ethnic vitriol posted by users made it impossible to keep up with the moderation of hate messages and that the situation had become hopeless regarding having any civil and meaningful conversations on the site (Kaigwa, 2017; Oddsdóttir, 2014; Zuckerman, 2009).

The case of Mashada.com’s temporary shutdown clearly illustrates how anonymity emboldened online users, leading to heightened volatility, unpredictability, and erratic behaviour in virtual settings (Köchler, 2017). The announcement of Mwai Kibaki as the winner of the election triggered widespread violence and ethnically targeted killings across the country. Kenyans both locally and in the diaspora resorted to using the Internet to engage in “online tribal wars” and insult those they viewed to be members of the “other” ethnic group. During this period, bloggers played a crucial role as citizen journalists not only by taking on the mantle of news reporters and documenting the violence and protests taking place all over the country, but also by opening up online spaces for users to engage in discussions on the state of the nation (Mukhongo, 2015; Zuckerman, 2009). It was during this same period that Ushahidi, a crowdsourcing platform, was established to help map and track instances of violence during the ongoing political crisis (Tully and Ekdale, 2014).

Over the next couple of years, the popularity of Mashada.com declined with the rise and adoption of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter (Kaigwa, 2017). Bloggers were among the early adopters of Twitter in Kenya, driven by the need to build a community outside of bulletin boards, blogs, comment sections, and email exchanges. For others, meanwhile, Twitter was an opportunity to publicise their content and create a following (Bing, 2015; Kaigwa, 2017). With the exception of the arrest of bloggers and high-profile social media users, the Kenyan government does not censor or block access to social media applications, which has led to a rise in the number of citizens being vocal about and critical of the government online. The criticism of government policies, institutions, and officials has largely been enabled by the growth of what can be referred to as “citizen journalism.” In May 2018, President Uhuru Kenyatta signed into law the “Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act, 2018.” Under this new law, Internet users face stiff penalties for publishing false or misleading information, computer forgery, espionage, and child pornography. The bill initially faced significant opposition from human rights activists, who argued that under the new law Kenyans’ fundamental rights and freedoms would be curtailed by certain provisions and that it would discourage or scare away whistle-blowers. Despite signing the bill into law, online engagement has not been curtailed, while the number of social media platform users (such as on WhatsApp, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok) has continued to steadily grow.

In Africa, Kenya is among the leading countries in terms of blogging, and Twitter is an increasingly popular platform for social commentary and political engagement. It is used for political contestation particularly among the middle class and the cultural, economic, and political elites. It is an online public sphere where Kenyans go to “square it out” with their adversaries, create memes to celebrate others, shame others, and engage in participatory cultures regarding content creation and sharing. This article deliberately selects Twitter for its analysis, because certain technological tools are more inviting than others in terms of enabling Internet users to engage in playful political expressions. Twitter is one such platform affording users spaces to use humour to create and share political memes (Tully and Ekdale, 2014), a process referred to as “network framing” by Meraz and Papacharissi (2013). While this article selects four specific Twitter hashtags from the disputed elections of 2017 to discuss humorous contestation, trending hashtags, and viral memes as forms of online political expression and dissent, it is important to also mention that there have been and continue to be numerous other cases of viral hashtags – ones consistently feeding into social and political contestation in the Kenyan online and offline public spheres.

One such example is #Makmende. In 2010, a superhero Kenyan vigilante named Makmende became Africa’s first viral Internet meme (Ekdale and Tully, 2013; Kaigwa, 2017). Makmende was used in the music video Ha-He by the group Just a Band (2010), as the song’s protagonist. His seeming invincibility led to long-standing online conversations and memes that propelled #Makmende to a globally trending hashtag on Twitter (Kaigwa, 2017). #Makmende marked the return of a fictional superhero that many Kenyans could remember from teenage tales of the 1970s and 1980s. Young Kenyans, predominantly urban ones priding themselves on being technological innovators, seized the moment to re-appropriate outdated stereotypes of weakness and turn them into aspirations of strength, inserting Kenya into global online conversations (Ekdale and Tully, 2013). This is what led to #Makmende becoming a viral international sensation. The hashtag made it to Twitter’s global top-ten list for hours (it was a major feat that #Makmende trended globally and not by country, because it was not until 2012 that Twitter would create personalised trending topics by country and region).

#Makmende memes became transnational in the real sense of the word, and he was reimagined as a cultural composite character – with users drawing references from US popular culture heroes. Jenkins et al. (2013; 264–265) argue that the Makmende mythology can be understood as an example of the expanded digital capacity of the African people and their ability to deploy transnational networked systems while playfully re-imagining their experiences and retelling their stories through spreadable media. The recipe used was to set up satirical factoids with absurdly exaggerated claims about Makmende’s toughness, invincibility, fighting style, and masculinity (Kaigwa, 2017). While the #Makmende memes incorporated local cultural references, they also appropriated global icons to demonstrate the inferiority of these figures in relation to the Kenyan superhero (Ekdale and Tully, 2013). By doing so, the #Makmende narrative attempted to subvert the often unilateral communication flows from the Global North to the Global South and the cultural hegemonies perpetuated through Western media.

The #Makmende case shows how hashtags serve as gathering points for the latest news updates, memes, and any protests – and in doing so, how they can serve as sites of playful engagement (Tully and Ekdale, 2014). In addition, #Makmende also well exemplified the fact that, in participatory cultures, audiences are active in the creation and spread of media content among online peers in an interactive, non-hierarchical process independent of elite-driven institutions (Jenkins et al., 2013; Kahne et al., 2015). Here, the participatory playfulness drew on spreadable and viral media to create and share stories and memes of inspiration through which Kenyans collectively reimagined a mythical hero from their teenage years who could lead the country towards political and economic stability at home, and cultural and technological dominance abroad (Ekdale and Tully, 2013: 284).

Attempts by Makmende fans to create a Wikipedia page were met with resistance, meanwhile. The Makmende page was deleted several times, with Wikipedia giving a number of different reasons ranging from it being nonsense, to copyright infringement, to vandalism, to there being no reliable source for the article. Zuckerman later summedup the Wikipedia controversy in a blog post titled “Makmende is so huge, he can’t fit in Wikipedia.” He noted that the Wall Street Journal covering the #Makmende phenomenon was a chance for the exploration of Kenyan Internet culture rather than turning away in ignorance or disinterest. He therefore argued for the need for more curiosity and less dismissal from English-language speakers in the West (Bidwell and Winschiers-Theophilus, 2015; Zuckerman, 2010). Wikipedia eventually allowed Makmende to have a page on its site.

Kenyans used memes to remix the Makmende fictional character and engage in online discourses about the governance challenges facing both Kenya and Africa in general. Makmende then became a figure of hope, someone who could help save Africa from the throes of poor leadership and governance. Of importance is that when Makmende returned in 2010, Kenya was undergoing a contentious and highly politicised process of constitutional reform. The country was struggling to reunite after the ethnic divisions fanned by the 2007–2008 political crisis. The expectation of constitutional reform was thus to help avoid a recurrence of the violence that had marred the 2007 presidential elections; yet the process became highly politicised and in fact further heightened ethnic divisions.

With the country still reeling from the political crisis and faced with a contentious constitutional referendum, fans created Makmende tales, videos, and artwork that re-imagined a hyper-masculine hero who embodied the hopes and vision of the country, going as far as picking him as their presidential candidate of choice (Ekdale and Tully, 2013). Online users re-imagined a superhero, marvelling at the skill and style of Makmende. As the debate about the constitutional referendum grew more ethnically divisive, and the youth agenda gained momentum, young Kenyans started to openly question whether prominent political figures were working in the best interests of the people (the referendum vote was on 4 August 2010, and was promulgated on 27 August 2010). Within this context, Makmende’s return offered an opportunity for Kenyans to re-examine their country’s political and cultural identity (Ekdale and Tully, 2013: 291).

This narrative would also be exemplified by the #SomeoneTellCNN case. Nothias and Cheruiyot (2018) argue that while much has been written about international media portrayals of Africa and the commodification of images from the continent, very little is said about audiences there and how they themselves perceive such coverage. The #SomeoneTellCNN trend was one case of African audiences contesting stereotypical portrayals of their home continent. The hashtag tells the story of Kenyans’ attempts to challenge media hegemony and the accompanying dominant stereotypes fostered by international media coverage. Kenyans used #SomeoneTellCNN to point out errors in news reporting of local events by international media, while at the same time rewriting stories about the coverage of East Africa. The use of Twitter has allowed African audiences to critically question media content and problematise the global media coverage of Africa, evidenced by how Kenyan Internet users invoked the hashtag #SomeoneTellCNN to critique the way in which the US news channel reported a violent terrorist attack in Nairobi, Kenya (Fisher, 2015; Willems and Mano, 2016).

The first use of #SomeoneTellCNN occurred when David McKenzie, CNN’s East Africa correspondent, was reporting a story and the news channel showed the anchor Jonathan Mann standing in front of an animated Kenyan flag with the headline “Violence in Kenya.” The Kenyan Twittersphere swiftly responded with ridicule and backlash, and #SomeoneTellCNN was born (Fisher, 2015; Nothias and Cheruiyot, 2018). The collective of Kenyans on Twitter (which has become famously known as KOT) went on the offensive, their tweets being characterised by satire, humour, facts, and occasional insults. KOT argued that Kenyans were the victims of the grenade attack at the bus terminal and not the perpetrators, and therefore they deserved an apology. They went further to point out that the coverage was not factual, but was instead biased, exaggerated, and steeped in stereotypes that portrayed Kenyans as perpetrators and not victims of terror – furthering the negatively biased image of the country as a place of violence and despotism (Ekdale and Tully, 2013; Kaigwa, 2017; Nothias and Cheruiyot, 2018). After sustained contestation from Kenyans, CNN and McKenzie later apologised for the coverage and for framing Kenya as a violent country following the aforementioned attack (Bloggers Association of Kenya (BAKE, 2015; Kaigwa, 2017; Nothias and Cheruiyot, 2018).

Today, #SomeoneTell has grown into a major hashtag of protest against the international media’s commodification of African images. Ahead of the 2013 general elections in Kenya, CNN’s Nima Elbagir covered a story about a would-be militia group that seemed to be training to defend itself; Elbagir concluded the news story by asserting that violence was going to break out in Kenya. This earned a harsh and sustained rebuttal from Kenyans, who demanded an apology. A new Twitter storm of #SomeoneTellCNN emerged and the news channel issued another apology. #SomeoneTellCNN is a response to a history of biased international media portrayals of Africa that create and reinforce narratives of “Afro-pessimism” (Nothias and Cheruiyot, 2018).

This was also witnessed in 2015, when then-US President Barack Obama was set to visit Kenya for the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Nairobi. CNN once again ran a story with the following lead: “President Obama is not just heading to his father’s homeland, but to a hotbed of terror” (Kaigwa, 2017). In response to the CNN story, KOT took to the social media platform in large numbers, and once again used #SomeoneTellCNN to berate the news organisation (Anyangwe, 2017). This time, the memes were full of imagery highlighting the country’s diversity, beauty, landscapes, and urban life. Kenyans once again used this hashtag to counter the stereotypes of their country as a hotbed of terror with positive storytelling and captivating imagery (Kaigwa, 2017). The frustration was also worsened by the presidential visit being widely perceived not as a global summit but as a celebratory homecoming tour given Obama’s father was Kenyan (Nothias and Cheruiyot, 2018). The hashtag can be considered as having been successful, because a CNN executive flew to Kenya to meet the country’s president and issued an apology to the people over the misrepresentation of Kenya. It is important to point out that while CNN apologised for its biased coverage, there are and continue to be concerns about international media coverage of Africa. Social media has, however, begun to alter who exactly speaks for Africa, and how the continent is presented to international news consumers (Gallagher, 2015). Many Africans are beginning to question how their stories are told, and are subsequently rewriting their narratives on the global stage.

From the above discussions, it is evident that social media tools have fostered participatory and viral media cultures in Kenya, opening up new possibilities for citizens who seek to create and share content globally (Makinen and Kuira, 2008). These popular platforms have also enabled users from the Global South to document their own stories and experiences, in order to counter the prevailing international news coverage. The imbalance in information flows between the Global North and the Global South often leads to media hegemony, and subsequently to the coverage of local events by international media through the lens of cultural imperialism. As #Makmende and #SomeoneTellCNN demonstrated, citizens of the Global South are reinventing how they engage online within national borders, while at the same time producing spreadable media that extends beyond them too (Ekdale and Tully, 2013: 295). From these two examples, it can be noted that the use of hashtags plays an important role in shaping Twitter discussions and framing conversations that take place in the resulting spaces, by making certain subjects salient (Tully and Ekdale, 2014).

Theoretical Framework: Participatory Media Cultures and Citizen Enactments

In order to properly examine the four selected cases, the theoretical discussion will be anchored in the “cute cat theory” framework of Zuckerman (2008), and will draw from earlier discussions about participatory media cultures, the “meme-ification” of politics, and spreadable media. Zuckerman’s theory was born out of the need to use popular platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat, YouTube, TikTok, and similar) to disseminate activist content, because by their nature they are difficult for governments to censor without also affecting harmless postings – in addition to their latent capacity to reach non-activist users, too (Zuckerman, 2015: 132). The theoretical discussions will be complemented by Jenkins et al. (2013)’s conceptualisation of spreadable media and its place in mobilisation for civic engagement. The reason why the article anchors itself on the cute cat theory is that the approach relates to using popular forms of spreadable media instead of creating specialist platforms explicitly for activists. Zuckerman argues that what is needed is a shift away from activist-specific platforms towards Internet tools designed to let ordinary consumers publish non-political content because (1) they are difficult for governments to censor without also affecting harmless postings, (2) censorship of inoffensive content can alert non-activist users to government censorship, and (3) activism using consumer tools can tap the latent capacity of nonactivist users to create and disseminate activist content (Zuckerman, 2015: 132).

The proliferation of ICT developments, innovation, and citizen engagement has made social media a driving force in political dynamics. As a result, participatory and spreadable media has become a key factor in audience mobilisation and user engagement. This has further been enabled by the rise of easy-to-use content creation tools and free hosting, a boon for activists, political dissidents, and protests groups alike (Bing, 2015; Zuckerman, 2015). It is a foregone conclusion that access to cheap smartphones is increasingly playing a leading role in the mobilisation of social and political protests around the world (Mutsvairo, 2016). In the Global South, digitally based social initiatives are reinventing social activism as activist and non-activist social media users alike embrace mobile technologies and social media for civic engagement (shifting from distribution to circulation) (p. 3). This is happening as they move towards a participatory and spreadable model of audience engagement, one

enabled by the audiences not simply being viewed as consumers of preconstructed messages, but instead, as people who are shaping, sharing, reframing, and remixing media content within larger networks which allow them to spread the content well beyond their immediate geographic proximity. (Jenkins et al., 2013: 2)

The rapid growth of Internet-enabled mobile devices is at the heart of the growth of playful participatory cultures in Kenya. Zuckerman argues that specially built tools designed to help activists promote social change are often outperformed by popular platforms, which he refers to as “tools designed to let people share cute pictures of their cats with friends” (2015: 139). The ease of use of these popular platforms and their interactive nature play a key role in building online participatory cultures among Internet users in Kenya, as voiceless citizens increasingly become active, engaged individuals holding their political representatives accountable, speaking truth to power and challenging existing political hegemonies (Bing, 2015). Undoubtedly, these platforms have opened up new avenues for civil society and activists, as well as created alternative public spaces for participatory cultures (Köchler, 2017). While the latter already existed before the advent of the Internet and have often continued to take place independently of current online engagement, “the affordances of digital media have made participatory cultures more common and are now often discussed in relation to digital practices and platforms” (Kahne et al., 2015: 39).

A key characteristic of participatory cultures has been the simplistic nature of the message presented and its ease of dissemination. For instance, oversimplifying a political message into a meme makes it more spreadable, but it also runs the risk of overlooking or trivialising major underlying issues. The focus here is on the analysis of online political contestation enabled by the emergence of participatory cultures fuelled by spreadable media such as memes – “which are remixed into existence because something about a given image or phrase or video lines up with an already-established set of linguistic norms” (Jenkins et al., 2013). It seeks answers to how simplified and memeified political messages can reveal meaningful expressions for collective action and civic engagement, and how they are redefining dissent and protest as online political contestation (Tully and Ekdale, 2014). This participatory online engagement is challenging the dominant narrative of what a protest is, particularly among millennials and Generation Z, and how participatory cultures – through the mediums of political humour and spreadable media – are being used to express social commentary and political dissent. Another key issue to consider is the playful element in the memeification of politics on Twitter; as Tully and Ekdale (2014) point out, participatory play may be enjoyable but not necessarily apolitical, and thus in fact be both subtly and blatantly political.

Due to there being many non-activist social media users, it is possible to think of the large number of overall users thereof as a “latent capacity” for activism. This is based on their ability to convert “voice” (pre-existing audience followers) into “influence” (when a user chooses to start engaging with and sharing about a social or political issue) in both online and offline engagements (Zuckerman, 2015: 138). Today, young people are converting voice into influence (a phrase coined by Zuckerman) by using social media to circulate (blogging, podcasting, forwarding links), collaborate (working together with others to produce and share information via projects, such as Wikipedia), create (producing and exchanging content via platforms like YouTube and Flickr), and connect (via mediums such as Facebook, Twitter, game clans, or Fandom) within the current digital mediascape.

Kahne et al. (2015: 40) point out that participatory cultures and spreadable media are about users getting involved in actions such as creation, collaboration, and circulation. They point out that reading a political story – whether online or offline – is not participatory; however, when a reader forwards the link to a friend, or posts a comment online about the story, then they are engaging in participatory politics. The cute cat theory therefore draws its strength from participatory cultures, through the latent capacity of networked social media platforms generating possibilities for users who are “unengaged” to be exposed to activist information based on their politically engaged friends posting a comment or sharing status updates, retweets, and likes (Bing, 2015: 174).

However, it is necessary to clarify that while blogs and other social media sites are becoming platforms for political activism and tools for whistle-blowers to expose corruption and the misappropriation of public funds (Bloggers Association of Kenya (BAKE, 2015), the overarching belief that everyone with Internet access is potentially an activist is fundamentally flawed (Mutsvairo, 2016). While access to the Internet offers opportunities for citizens to engage in “clicktivism,” a form of “thin” civic engagement, there is often a need for activism to transcend online spaces and enter offline public spaces – where citizens can engage in sit-ins, marches, street protests, street art, dance, and theatre, as well as other forms of bodily staged performances.

It has become fashionable to describe and propagate these new interactive tools of communication as a kind of recipe for the advancement of democracy and human rights (Köchler, 2017); however, studying spreadable media as a social phenomenon requires examination of people’s social media practices (Helle-Valle, 2016), of their ways of life, and also of what can be referred to as their “lived experiences.” The development of digital technologies and the “new media” era have not brought us any nearer to a new world order of equity, fairness, and justice. During the last few decades, social rifts appear to have become even deeper; prejudice and hatred along ethnic and cultural lines have become more profound (Köchler, 2017: 8). Many questions still exist regarding how users can best engage in conflict-sensitive online environments (Oddsdóttir, 2014), and instead of presupposing a linear, causal relationship between online content and individual behaviour, there is a need to examine more closely how audiences make sense of spreadable media content – not just against a background of dramatic outbreaks of violence, but also in the context of their everyday lived experiences (Willems and Mano, 2016).

This article seeks to examine how hashtags were used during the 2017 elections in Kenya. This will be done through a critical analysis of four hashtags as collective frames: #GitheriMan, #Canaan, #PeoplesPresident, and #Handshake. These four were used to frame the story of the 2017 elections in Kenya, and are indicative of how humour was incorporated in spreadable and viral media to help drive collective action such as political campaigns, voting, post-election marches, protests against electoral fraud, and the condemnation of widespread abuses by the country’s security forces.

Methodology

The concept of “hybridity,” as discussed by Highfield (2016), refers to public spaces where traditional and newer media intersect, overlap, and in combination shape political coverage and action by several publics such as the media, political actors, and the citizenry. This article seeks to descriptively analyse social media discourses of various publics and how they intersect in their appropriation of trending hashtags as forms of political contestation in Kenya. I refer to them as “publics” by taking the view of Warner (2002) and Highfield (2016) that they are self-organised social spaces formed between strangers and created by the reflexive circulation of online discourse featuring personal and impersonal narratives.

Social media practices can be specific to political themes, but the use of such online platforms has clearly highlighted the personalisation of politics and the emergence of political themes (labelled with hashtags on Twitter) from out of seemingly unrelated topics and spaces (Highfield, 2016). #Makmende was a good example hereof. Twitter has become a popular social networking platform, which allows users to easily post short messages (140 characters) that are public and available for anyone to read (Hoeber and Hoeber, 2015). The personalisation of politics has therefore been well exemplified by the intersection between Twitter (online) and “real-life” (offline) events. On Twitter, the personal lives of Internet users intersect with the political, as explained by Highfield (2016) – who cites the case of users taking polling booth selfies and subsequently posting them on the platform. At that moment, the action becomes both personal and political. Highfield asserts that the personal and the political are highly interlinked, and that social media platforms can bring about the further personalisation of politics – not in terms of parties or politicians tailoring messages for individuals, but regarding how users document their experience of political issues (p. 3).

The data for this article were generated through participant observation in the Kenyan Twittersphere, with the study adopting a qualitative inductive approach for data analysis. Once the data had been collected for the selected hashtags, the next step was to do a detailed reading of the tweets and try to decode the meanings and cues in each. Due to selecting to use inductive and not deductive approach, the process of data analysis was time-consuming; this stage was also challenging due to the aforementioned character limits per tweet, and with it a heavy reliance on ethnic and cultural innuendos in them. However, it was important to ensure that online users’ tweets were not misinterpreted based on my own ethnic and cultural background. Another challenge was interpreting memes, because often the commonly established meaning of an image is rather loosely defined and depends more on the communicative framing – such as language and context. Due to the fact that images on their own can be weak signals and the meaning thereof is often determined more connotatively than denotatively, I had to careful analyse the memes to make sure that I drew from the ongoing context and association with the memories and mental images at the time in order to understand the meanings behind the images used in them (Fahlenbrach, 2016).

Thereafter, the selected hashtags were categorised into select political themes that were personalised and memeified trends on Twitter. As noted, only four hashtags (#GitheriMan, #Canaan, #PeoplesPresident, and #Handshake) were selected for analysis, as the story of the contentious 2017 Kenyan elections can be framed through them collectively. The article then goes further and presents the data collected as analysed in the form of “thick” descriptions and discussions.

According to Hoeber and Hoeber (2015), the value of using data generated from Twitter to study public opinion is often threefold: first, it is open, accessible, and unfiltered; second, it provides the ability to tag important elements using hashtags; and third and finally, it means that there is a huge amount of data available for analysis. The article puts emphasis on discussions derived through a qualitative approach to generating data for analysis and discussion. This approach was used because Twitter data sets are textual, in short or cryptic language, and because of the simultaneity between real-world events and the live tweeting of the public as the latter unfold. In addition, the qualitative approach also helped to overcome the ever-present challenge of multiplicity in meanings and the cryptic nature of tweets due to their noted 140-character limit.

Discussion of the Selected Cases: Trending Twitter Hashtags

The 2017 elections (Kenya held two in that year: the Supreme Court cancelled the first due to voting irregularities, and called for a rerun) were amongst of the most contested issues in the Kenyan Twittersphere. The issues of concern included the use of technology, election processes, and electoral institutions. Of significance to this article is that the 2017 elections witnessed extensive use of digital technologies not just during the campaigns but also during voting, which subsequently became the reason for the elections being contested. Conversations about Cambridge Analytica and allegations of an algorithm being created to rig the election were rife on Twitter. During this period of contested electoral results, there was a dichotomy of two groups of Twitter users. On the one hand, you had the technologists, legal experts, and activists whose tweets were mainly arguments about the “alleged algorithm” that had supposedly been used to rig the elections. On the other, we had online users under the collective of KOT who were not technologists, legal experts, or activists, but who regardless were actively engaged in satirical and playful participatory cultures by spreading memes and creating viral hashtags. The voting technology on which the country had spent billions to adopt and which was flaunted as a pillar of ICT advancement in Kenya became the very same technology that brought the country to the edge of a precipice. Kenya would become incredibly polarised over online allegations of the elections being rigged and attempts to hack into the election management database, compounded by President Kenyatta having hired the controversial data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica.

The focus now specifically turns to how participatory media cultures in the context of the 2017 elections – as exemplified in hashtags, political humour, and memes – shaped and reflected social commentary and political dissent in Kenya. The section presents discussions from analysis of the following four selected cases: #GitheriMan, #Canaan, #PeoplesPresident, and #Handshake. These selected cases are representative of the use of social media to frame the challenges facing Kenya with regard to electoral politics, and also exemplify how non-institutional engagements such as online activism can translate into “offline” activism, such as bodily staging practices in public spaces, resulting in a shift in dominant hegemonic discourses and institutional policy changes.

#GitheriMan

#GitheriMan was an example of how new media technologies have been used to set an agenda for public discourses during moments of crisis and uncertainty. #GitheriMan was a trending hashtag that started during the 2017 elections in Kenya and later evolved into a media-circus story that was covered across several media houses and ended up featuring in roadshows and receiving endorsement from a number of high-profile personalities. It started with the media coverage of the 2017 elections showing voters queuing at various polling stations. Internet users noticed, from one video clip aired, a voter (Martin Kimotho) standing in the long, winding queue eating from a polythene bag a local dish commonly known as “githeri” (steamed maize and beans). The image resonated with the struggles of the working class and urban poor and their hopes of an election and for the future of the nation.

In the midst of fears of another bungled election, and the opposition questioning the credibility of the electoral results, the #GitheriMan tweets and memes offered much-needed distraction through social commentaries about the struggles of Kenyans and were often laced with humour. #GitheriMan became a symbol of Kenyan’s hope, and several memes were created where the man was photoshopped into politician’s photographs, onto music band covers, as well as alongside famous media personalities, characters from the TV show Game of Thrones, and even next to some US political figures. #GitheriMan united Kenyans across different divides at a time when political tensions were very high. He became a symbol of determination and perseverance among Kenyan voters, and a song was later released about him by MC Njagi.

#GitheriMan helped to lighten the mood in the country during a very tense political period, fraught with fears of violence erupting amidst an election that was compromised by the very technology that Kenya as a nation embraces and celebrates (several concerns also arose about the IT-facilitated voter registration, biometric identification, electronic transmissions of results, and vote tallying). The media also joined in, and #GitheriMan became a daily conversation during breakfast shows and prime-time news in Kenya. Kimotho rose from a working-class Kenyan to an overnight celebrity, with numerous media houses and companies lining up to interview him. He even hired a manager and a lawyer to manage his overnight rise to fame. For Kenyans, this was a symbol of hope and rebirth during the moments of uncertainty that the country was then going through.

While #GitheriMan memes went viral and Kimotho was later awarded the Head of State Commendation, this outcome received a lot of mixed reactions from Kenyans on Twitter who questioned whether the focus on #GitheriMan memes during moments of electoral fraud and political uncertainty was a distraction from the key issue of electoral malpractice. Concerns were also raised about the media and journalists drawing news coverage from online participatory cultures that were more focused on playfulness and humorous memes, while overlooking urgent civic issues such as the heavily contested election results, ethnic polarisation, polling station violence, the National Resistance Movement (NRM) protests and accompanying police brutality. Subsequently the media faced criticism for focusing too much on #Githeriman, while shying away from discussing the controversial subject of whether the August 2017 elections had been free and fair.

#Canaan

The 2017 Kenyan elections were referred to as the “elections of memes.” With an increasingly digitally savvy population, what was witnessed on Twitter during the electioneering period were highly politically charged conversations. Political candidates hired “digital teams” to help boost their online profile and mobilise supporters on social media networks. Candidates further embraced the use of digital media by constantly uploading posts, images, and videos about their political campaigns. They used Facebook Live to broadcast to their followers. Notable was when the incumbent, Kenyatta, skipped the televised presidential debate and instead opted to hold a question and answer session with his supporters on Facebook. Miguna Miguna, who was running as an independent candidate for the gubernatorial seat of Nairobi County, mainly used Facebook, Twitter, and guest appearances on television shows during his campaign. Miguna’s heavy engagement on social media earned him a sizeable following; however, he only ultimately garnered 1 per cent of the vote for the seat of Governor of Nairobi County.

As the campaigns heated up, memes were constantly created, remixed, and shared as political events unfolded. Internet users during this period were heavily engaged in content creation of a satirical and playful participatory nature. The 2017 “elections of memes” were, however, dominated by one major hashtag: #Canaan. Supporters of Raila Odinga had a very strong presence on Twitter, and they created memes based on the analogy of an exodus to Canaan (the Promised Land) by the Israelites in the Bible – using the #Canaan memes to illustrate Odinga’s ever-elusive victory at the ballot box (referencing the 2007 and 2013 elections). In their analogy, Canaan was a transformed Kenya that would be ruled by Odinga – often referred to as “baba” (Swahili word for father). The “Canaan movement” was among the topics that trended the most on Twitter during the electioneering period in 2017, as users laid out plans about their final destination (Canaan) and for celebrating their arrival.

Odinga went as far as calling on his supporters to abstain from any form of sexual intercourse on the eve of election day in order to guarantee that they all crossed over into Canaan. This sent Twitter into meltdown. Numerous playful memes were then created and shared, and tweets were sent out en masse by both his and Kenyatta’s supporters regarding abstinence and Canaan. #Canaan was the subject most tweeted about during the electioneering period, and even Kenyatta’s followers joined in. Many of them used the hashtag to mock Odinga’s supporters. For Kenyatta’s followers, Canaan represented an exodus by Odinga’s followers from Kenya after Kenyatta’s victory, leaving them to allegedly “live in peace” without Odinga’s supporters being around to bother them.

However, Canaan proved to be elusive once again for Odinga’s supporters when Kenyatta was announced as the winner. Odinga filed a petition with the Supreme Court however, and the election results were nullified. While this was a huge moment for Odinga’s supporters, the Twittersphere in Kenya exploded with all sorts of tweets and memes about the Supreme Court decision. The chief justice at that point then became the centre of the memes. He was appropriated therein as the “Joshua” of the Canaan movement. The decision by the Supreme Court became a validation for Odinga’s supporters that, while the journey to Canaan might be fraught with challenges, they would still make it through the wilderness and into the Promised Land eventually. Shortly after the Supreme Court decision calling for a repeat election, Odinga boycotted the rerun citing a lack of trust in the Electoral Commission. #Canaan kept evolving, and became a form of economic resistance. The National Super Alliance (NASA) coalition led by Odinga was renamed the aforementioned NRM, and he called on his supporters to get involved in the boycott of companies he argued had participated in helping Kenyatta emerge victorious in a fraudulent election. His supporters remixed and shared memes about switching their phone service providers from Safaricom to Airtel, arguing that through economic resistance they would cripple the corporations that had helped Kenyatta to win and would finally reach Canaan.

#PeoplesPresident

After the contested 2017 elections, the NRM called for secession and demanded the swearing-in of Odinga as the people’s president. The trending hashtag hence became #PeoplesPresident. The then-Member of Parliament for Homa Bay Town, Peter Kaluma, drafted a bill seeking to amend the constitution and allow for the secession of forty out of a total of forty-seven counties in Kenya. This was also supported by the then-governor for Mombasa County, Ali Hassan Joho, who has a huge following on social media. In response, the government arrested David Ndii, NRM economic strategist and Odinga’s advisor, on 3 December 2017, on suspicion of inciting violence. This led to a lot of outrage on Twitter, with the NRM posting a tweet asserting that the arrest of Ndii officially marked the beginning of the People’s Assembly. The tweet was widely retweeted, remixed, and shared by NRM supporters. The People’s Assemblies were created in several counties that voted for Odinga. According to the NRM, these bodies were meant to be a pathway to mobilising grass-roots leaders and pushing for constitutional reviews. While the County Assemblies passed motions to establish the People’s Assemblies, the government warned that the latter were illegal; Odinga insisted, however, that the Assemblies would stay in place until a legitimate president was sworn in.

Miguna, a vocal critic of the government and a heavy social media user who ran, as noted, for the gubernatorial seat of Nairobi County as an independent candidate and was not originally a member of the NASA coalition, also joined the NRM after the contested elections. On his Twitter page, he referred to himself as an NRM general and a freedom fighter. A look at conversations on Twitter about the NRM shows that it had self-declared generals such as Miguna, field marshals such as Nelson Havi (a prominent Nairobi lawyer), patriots such as Dikembe Disembe (a blogger with a huge following in Kenya), alongside other Internet users who identified as NRM comrades and foot soldiers. These were very savvy media users who used spreadable media to engage NRM sympathisers and helped build a huge fan base for the movement. While their discourses on Twitter were about secession, many of them were not arrested; several received threats thereof from the government, however.

On 30 January 2018, Odinga was sworn in as the people’s president in Nairobi’s Uhuru Park in front of thousands of his supporters and with millions of Kenyans watching via Facebook Live. #PeoplesPresident and #RailaSwearingIn became the trending topics. President Kenyatta summoned the country’s news editors to State House and warned that the swearing-in was a treasonous activity and the government would revoke the licences of any media houses that aired the event. As a result, three television stations were switched off for attempting to live broadcast the swearing-in. The security forces went as far as camping outside the building of Nation Media Centre, waiting to arrest three NTV journalists: Linus Kaikai, Larry Madowo, and Ken Mijungu. The shutting down of the broadcasting houses did not deter Kenyans; instead, many resorted to watching live feeds on social media and engaging in the remixing and sharing of memes as the swearing-in took place. While the government did not arrest Odinga himself, the self-declared NRM general Miguna was detained; he would then be deported to Canada despite the fact that he was born in Kenya, having acquired Canadian citizenship after being granted political asylum there in 1988. Kenyans responded in fury on Twitter, questioning why a Kenyan could be deported to Canada. While in exile, Miguna kept his social media pages very active and hosted live feeds for his followers. However, his attempts to return to Kenya were unfruitful, and he was forcefully deported to Canada once more when he attempted to return to his native country – leading to #MigunaMigunaDeportedAgain becoming a trending subject on Twitter.

#Handshake

On 9 March 2018, Kenyans woke up to see Odinga and Kenyatta standing in front of Harambee House jointly giving a press conference, which ended with a handshake between the two leaders. It was an act that left the country shocked after months of divisive politics and calls for secession; #Handshake led to the creation, remixing, and sharing of some of the most interesting memes on Twitter. A look at #Handshake reveals that Twitter was full of memes by Internet users trying to make sense of what had happened to lead Odinga to make peace with Kenyatta. Odinga defended his decision to offer the handshake, arguing that it was a very painful act but one that he did regardless in the best interest of Kenyans. He further noted that the two leaders had signed a memorandum of understanding to address issues of corruption, poverty, tribalism, insecurity, and divisive politics. While some of his followers immediately took to social media and joined in the calls for unity, others felt that the handshake was a betrayal because Miguna was still in exile in Canada and the NRM’s followers had not been consulted or even informed before the act took place. #Handshake went viral and was a trending topic for a number of days; yet it led to the most polarising views among NRM followers. Not all of them were convinced that it was the best decision for the movement. As a result, a lot of memes were created by supporters of Miguna, who called on him to lead them to Canaan because, according to them, Odinga had “finally joined the despots.” In March 2018, Miguna declared on social media that the NRM was no longer part of the NASA coalition. Ndii, on the other hand, argued that the handshake would finally end the Kenyatta–Odinga dynasty feud that had plagued the nation for almost the entire period since gaining independence in 1964 (the feud goes back to 1969, when then-President Jomo Kenyatta [Uhuru Kenyatta’s father] had a falling out with his Vice President, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga [Raila Odinga’s father]). For the almost fifty years ever since, Kenya’s political landscape had been beset by this dynasty feud.

Following up on his promises to help heal the country, during Labour Day celebrations on 1 May 2018, Odinga publicly called on his followers to cease the economic resistance and support companies such as Safaricom, Bidco, and Brookside that the NRM had previously called on its members to boycott. This sentiment was reiterated by his followers on social media; on 5 May 2018, Donald Kipkorir – a lawyer, NRM sympathiser, and an avid social media user – tweeted that he had withdrawn his support for Miguna because his politics were anarchist, yet he, Donald Kipkorir, was a constitutionalist. The former chief justice of Kenya, Dr. Willy M. Mutunga, immediately tweeted back at Kipkorir pointing out that even anarchists have rights, and their views are their freedom of expression. Kipkorir’s tweet lit up Twitter, leading many users to question his decision to withdraw his support for Miguna.

Kipkorir went ahead and defended himself, arguing that he believes in revolutions and not anarchism and therefore he was withdrawing his support for Miguna because he did not want to be considered an adherent to his political ideology. This then was a clear indicator that the mood in the country had shifted after the handshake, and the resistance movement was no more. A look at the #Handshake memes on Twitter revealed that former NRM sympathisers were putting calls for secession on hold and giving peace a chance, while waiting for directions on the way forward from their leader, Odinga. In the words of Havi:

I Field Marshal Nelson Havi still in the Sierra Maestra, have received a signal from H.E Raila Odinga that he has come to an armistice with H.E Uhuru Kenyatta. I have accordingly ceased fire, joined the two for service but will deal with corruption and impunity from within. (Havi, 2018)

From the cases discussed above, it is obvious that with the resources of online participatory cultures increasingly available, there are greater opportunities for youth and for civic actors to exert agency in the public sphere – both as individuals and within communities of practice (Kahne et al., 2015). Branch and Mampilly (2015) argue that previously Africa has been largely ignored as a site of civic engagement and protest, the silence partly due to the prejudiced Western images of the continent being too rural, too traditional, and too bound by ethnicity and violence for modern political protests to arise. However, the practices of participatory politics offer new routes towards influence in the political realm, particularly for Internet users who may be outside of conventional elite groups such as politicians and journalists (Kahne et al., 2015). The participatory nature of Web 2.0 tools has led to an emergence of a new group of social media influencers and bloggers in Kenyan politics such as Robert Alai, Cyprian Nyakundi, Bel Akinyi, and Disembe.

Concluding Remarks

Critics have argued that playful online engagement is not a successful form of civic engagement. Some scholars will posit that playful participatory cultures often oversimplify issues and there is a lack of correlation between online political interest and offline political engagement. Mutsvairo (2016) points out that while social media and technological changes have made activism easier by providing platforms for debate and knowledge-sharing, the challenge is that, oftentimes, users are likely to engage in online activism and clicktivism and not go out to engage in street protests or in occupying and bodily staging practices in public spaces. For instance, while Twitter served as a mobilisation platform for Kenyan Internet users to go onto the streets and stage protests after the contested elections, we also had a number of individuals who engaged in online protests but did not also join the weekly NRM street protests in Nairobi and other cities across Kenya.

On the one hand, it can therefore be concluded that while the Internet is a resource for activists, enabled by its latent capacity to reach a wider audience, it is not always a guarantee of democratic engagement; providing a platform for protest does not always translate into users understanding the content of a particular message or knowing what action to take upon reading it (Mutsvairo, 2016). However, we should be cautious to not entirely dismiss playful participatory cultures and memes as simply clicktivism and insignificant forms of civic engagement. There are often various reasons why online users resort to using humour to express serious political subjects (apathy towards a political system, a form of reprieve, or used as an art form), and it is therefore important that we still recognise such tweets and memes as actual forms of civic engagement. This article thus concludes that while we might be tempted to dismiss playful civic engagement and viral memes as just being funny “cat” memes, the cases discussed above help show that such participatory cultures have a role to play in driving political contestation and mobilisation for collective action.

The success of playful participatory cultures is also enabled by the effective transition from online to offline spaces, whereby users transcend online boundaries to occupy public spaces – be it through art forms such as murals, graffiti, and matatu (minibus) art, or via playful expressions like song, dance, and street theatre. In the case of #Canaan, the Internet was used as a form of mobilisation to call upon each individual to engage in street protests and boycott certain companies. The playful participatory culture in this case transcended into product boycotts of a list of companies that NRM supporters argued had played a role in supporting an oppressive regime that rigged an election. NRM supporters shared the list of companies on Twitter, which went viral and led to memes and videos sharing advice and tips appearing on WhatsApp, Facebook, and YouTube as well – for instance, on how to switch one’s mobile phone provider from Safaricom to Airtel or regarding alternative household products to buy in place of the ones manufactured by Bidco Oil Refineries Ltd.

While digital technologies are reshaping the landscape of activism, it would be a misnomer to assume activism is a product of new media technologies. Activism existed even before the advent of Web 2.0 tools; according to Mutsvairo, “it’s been there for as long as Africans have lived” (2016: 10). While digital media has made audience engagement more widely accessible, it is crucial to also acknowledge that there is a longer history of playful audience political participation on the continent, even during times of strong state intervention in the media sector (Willems and Mano, 2016). An example is the Redykyulass comedy show by Walter Mong’are, John Kiarie, and Tony Njuguna. It was created and produced during the repressive regime under Daniel arap Moi, at a time when the president’s name could only be mentioned in hushed tones. As a comedy show, its intention might have been to make Kenyans laugh; however, it also became a form of opposition when the trio boldly took on the ruling elite using political satire during a time when opposition leaders were being arrested and detained and the media heavily censored. Redykyulass broke the cowering repressive silence of the 1990s by laughing at the “big man” in open public spaces. The show helped to awaken a consciousness among Kenyans that everything was possible without Moi, leading to his ousting and the setting of Kenya on a path of democracy (Kiarie, 2007; Kibinge, 2008; Musila, 2010).

What makes online activism unique is its being situated in a cultural landscape characterised by emerging media technologies, which are far more participatory and spreadable. These facts have opened up innumerable possibilities for online users to express themselves. Through hashtags such as #Makmende, #SomeoneTellCNN, #GitheriMan, #PeoplesPresident, #Handshake, and #MigunaMigunaDeportedAgain, participants have found a canvas on which to express their creativity and visions, and often seize the opportunity to re-imagine their future and to demonstrate their potential to the rest of the world (Ekdale and Tully, 2013). Participatory cultures – whether playful, counter-narratives, or online contestations – have become key to opening up spaces for online expression and engagement (albeit clicktivism and thin in nature) by young people in emerging democracies.