African Elections as a Testing Ground: Comparing Coverage of Cambridge Analytica in Nigerian and Kenyan Newspapers

Algorithms and the News Media in Kenya: Emerging Issues in Data Policy and Accountability

“…Kenya's current laws hardly guarantee the protection of citizen rights against the malpractices of multinational companies and big tech organisations (Ekdale and Tully 2019). While the Data Protection Act, for example, gives the Data Commissioner sweeping powers to investigate data breaches, including powers of entry and search and issuing administrative fines, there is little faith that enforcement will be possible, particularly where big tech companies are involved.…”

Shadow Politics: Commercial Digital Influencers, “Data,” and Disinformation in India

“…Consultants who “market data collection and analysis services” mine data from platforms such as Facebook and Twitter “to learn behavioral patterns and predict and manipulate them” (126). Studies have also documented Cambridge Analytica’s campaign activities in the presidential elections in Nigeria and Kenya (Ekdale & Tully, 2019). Josh Goldstein and Shelby Grossman (2021) have observed that “political actors are increasingly outsourcing their disinformation work to third-party PR and marketing firms,” adding that Facebook and Twitter “attributed at least 15 [disinformation] operations to private firms, such as marketing and PR companies” in 2020.…”

Connections Between Internet, Social Media News Use, and Political Participation in Kenya

“…Empirical evidence from single-country studies in Africa suggests that greater Internet access use in Tanzania has led to a reduced likelihood to vote due to exposure to political information that primes Tanzanians to critically evaluate poor-performing governments (Bailard, 2012). In Kenya, the early adoption of the Internet created excitement among ordinary Kenyans, political elites, and academics on the possibilities of using the new medium for civic and political engagement (Bing, 2015) and to mobilize the inactive Kenyan citizenry (Ekdale & Tully, 2019; Nzina, 2014). Nzina argues that the new media has become a tool for political mobilization through political campaigns and has provided a platform for political expression.…”

“…Although there are some studies in Kenya that have examined the relationship between social media use and political outcomes such as political participation, these relationships have been tested mainly among youth who may not be active politically and thus the findings cannot be generalized to the larger population (Kamau, 2017; Ndlela, 2020). Other studies have either taken a critical media approach (Nothias & Cheruiyot, 2019; Ogola, 2015), or an international comparative approach (Adegbola & Gearhart, 2019; Ekdale & Tully, 2019) by comparing the effects of digital media use on participation between Kenya and other countries. Put together, these studies suggest that social media use for news has a weak positive relationship with political engagement.…”