The Kenyan 2022 Elections
On August 9th, 2022, Kenyans will once again be heading to the polls to elect their President, National government representatives, and County government representatives. The presidential candidates are four including the major front runners Raila Odinga, former Prime Minister of Kenya (2008–2013) and leader of Orange Democratic Movement/Azimio la Umoja Alliance, William Ruto, current Deputy President of Kenya (2013–present), and leader of United Democratic Alliance. The other two candidates include David Waihiga Mwaure, leader of the Agano Party who is running on a socially conservative, religious, and economic prudent manifesto while George Wajackoyah, leader of Roots Party of Kenya is running on a radical populist manifesto that includes the legalization of bhang/cannabis and snake farming. While Kenyan voters have predictably flocked to rallies by the major front runners in the elections, the other presidential candidates specifically George Wajackoyah and his Roots party, have taken another route focusing their campaigns on social media platforms to gather traction. They have a radical and populist manifesto which seems to have endeared them, especially to the younger generation of voters who have a larger social media presence and whose apathy to voter registration indicated by a low turnout indicates the front runners are not having the impact they wished they would have had with that demographic. Both front runners have actually launched separate ‘youth manifestos’ to remedy this apathy both promising social and economic reforms favoring the youth demographic specifically. Despite this expected strategy from the front runners, it is indeed interesting to note that the other two minor candidates are polar opposites. David Waihiga Mwaure cuts a clean-cut image, eloquent, Christian conservative, and measured with his words. The party’s image is that of a lamb. The Image of the Lamb is associated with or symbolizes themes of religion, innocence, and morality. Prof George Wajackoyah on the other hand cuts the image of an eloquent, well-educated rebel with revolutionary disregard for the accepted norms in Kenya’s current social, cultural, political, and economic status quo. The Image of a root and slogan of ‘Tingiza Mti’ seems to project a message of rebellion against the status quo which is the tree and going to the roots will destabilize and uproot the tree. So while the status quo can generally be assumed to be the front runners in the elections with their allies most of whom have been in and are in the current government, Kenyans are now faced with an alternative choice away from the status quo. The choice between the Cannabis Rebel and the Christian Conservative.
Social Media and Psychological operations (PSYOP)
It is within this context that this article would like to examine the subjects of elections, digital media, and the role of psychological operations in both areas. The context within which this article refers to social media is the interactive digital channels that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks.[1] [2]While psychological operations may broadly be defined as the planned use of communications to influence human attitudes and behavior, to create target groups, behavior, emotions, and attitudes that support the attainment of national objectives.
Now that we have defined both variables let us examine the context within which they fall in the Kenyan 2022 general elections. Although 22.1 million voters are registered for Kenya’s general polls in August, up from 19.6 million five years ago, only 39.84% of those voters are young people, according to Wafula Chebukati, chairman of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC). While the older generation of voters who make up the majority of 60 %, know and identify with the major front runners and their allies we still have a sizeable chunk of 40% of the younger generation notable displaying an apathy to the status quo. IEBC blames the low voter registration figures by the younger generation of voters who are aged between 18-35 years on economic hardships and corruption in the country that has discouraged the youth from engaging in the electoral process. This is not a surprise considering the global economy is experiencing a recession, partly fueled by the Russian-Ukraine conflict, which started just after countries across the world were beginning to recover from the Coronavirus pandemic. Needless to say, the Kenyan economy has also been hit hard with the price of basic foodstuff and fuel rising.
The number of Kenyan voters aged between 18-35 who registered to vote for the August polls dropped by 5.27% compared to 2017. Those who registered we can actively presume are disenchanted with the status quo and are airing their frustrations on social media where they have a huge presence.[3] In Kenya in 2020, mobile phone penetration among adults (30,301,812 people over age 18 in Kenya) was 98%, with 43% of adults using the internet (96% of them on smartphones rather than computers) and 17% using social media (98% of them on smartphones). Thus based on the above figures of registered youth voters who make up roughly 8.8 million voters we can deduce that around 1 million or more of them should be able to access social media accounts in one form or another. It is this segment of voters that is the target of what seems to be Psychological Operations (PSYOP) in digital political campaigns that are becoming a norm on social media platforms in Kenya. It is indeed unique for a sub-Saharan country to resort to psychographic profiling and targeting of its civilian population where regime change is rife with election irregularity and rampant voter tampering on the ground.[4] These activities include deception, coercion, and influence activities from propaganda, persuasion, policy-making, information, and marketing scholarship. One quick glance daily on the Kenyan social media platforms reveals sponsored political hashtags trending largely due to social media influencers paid by marketing agencies who have in turn been paid by political operatives. In other cases, influential social media personalities directly affiliated with political parties, and even security agencies share misinformation frequently without bothering to verify it first.
If you check the Kenyan Twitter accounts that trend political hashtags the characteristic features tend to be the same. The Twitter handles do not bear the owner’s real names, the followers of those Twitter accounts tend to range between 1000 to even 1 million followers, they trend hashtags from all political parties (money is the common denominator), and multiple Twitter accounts are run sometimes by the same individual and most of the owners of these accounts are technologically savvy. The fact that some of these Twitter account holders can be paid from as low as Ksh.1000 (based on Wowzi rates) to trend hashtags to thousands of people makes social media a popular campaign tool, especially for cash-strapped political candidates in the constituency and county level of politics. We have companies such as Wowzi which is basically an Influencer Platform based in Kenya selling social media reach and influence at a fee. A platform operating similar to other internet platforms such as Air BnB or Uber but in this case, the product is social media marketing and PR. This is actually quite an innovative idea. The two Kenyan presidential front runners are heavy hitters on social media. William Ruto has 4.8 million followers on Twitter while Raila has 3.6 million followers. They also have close allies who act as their social media influencers/ political allies(cronies) with accounts that have followers of 1 million and above. Of course, we have to factor in that some of their followers are not Kenya citizens thus the real numbers may be lower. But these numbers come with power in the digital space. The ability to influence sentiments, inform and misinform a huge amount of people in just 280 characters, the Twitter character limit. Of course, ever since Josef Goebbels mastered the art of propaganda during world war II, many after him have learned crucial lessons and applied them. Social media has now become the weapon of choice for Kenya politicians when it comes to propaganda and political rhetoric. It is cheap, fast, and effective.
But is there a dark side to Social Media Influencing and PSYOPs? The insight from data mined from such digital political campaigns can be crucial for security services, intelligence agencies, and policymakers when it comes to policy formulation and decision making. Whether they have access to the data is subject to conjecture. However, as the several recent scandals involving, individuals, states, and corporates (Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, NSA, Facebook, and Cambridge Analytica) have shown, it is clear that states will go to any length to protect their national security while corporations will go to any length to protect their profits and revenue streams. Data sets can be analyzed for example in the case of Kenya along, tribal, age, religious, educational level, social beliefs, cultural beliefs, and political affiliation clusters. For context, Psychographic research which emerged in the 1960s, originally to understand consumer (rather than political) behavior, moves beyond the above standard demographics into areas such as personality traits, activities, interests, opinions, needs, values, and attitudes to offer novel insights into large, representative samples of respondents [5]. These data can be gleaned from social media quite easily today. In the past decade psychographic and neuromarketing tools have been combined with data and tracking methods to determine the emotional impact of advertising campaigns, and how to tailor persuasive political messages to profiled audiences’ psychological needs[6]. “Profiling” is defined in the European General Data Protection Regulation as: “any form of automated processing of personal data, to analyze or predict aspects concerning that natural person’s performance at work, economic situation, health, personal preferences, interests, reliability, behavior, location or movements.[7] This is a goldmine literally in this digital age. For example, a group of youth attending a reggae concert in Nairobi Kenya, and who confirmed attendance via Social Media event platforms could unwittingly be profiled as a target for Kenyan Presidential aspirant George Luchiri Wajackoyah, Roots party, whose goal of legalizing cannabis, a key component of their manifesto, has been promoted along with reggae songs on the campaign trail.
Conclusion
The future ramifications of a growing Kenyan population that is increasingly acquiring smartphones and creating an online presence on the internet can have positive and negative consequences. Millennials who demographic researchers put their date of birth between 1981-1996 ushered and saw the transition of a world transforming from analog to digital platforms. Generation Z or Zoomers born between 1997 and 2012 have literally grown up in a world surrounded by digital platforms whereas Generation Alpha born between the early 2010s to 2020 will have literally not known a world without digital platforms. As we look toward the future, data collected from these 3 Kenyan generations will impact all aspects of their life; social, economic, cultural, religious, and political beliefs. In the context of politics, it will change the nature of how politicians view voters. Any piece of any information will be an added advantage in that cutthroat future. You as the voter will also have a trove of verifiable and non-verifiable information available. In short to make decisions that will impact your future as the voter, you can choose to verify, research, question, and even critically examine what your leaders stand for. Indeed, a future where propaganda and misinformation will be the norm is a possibility. But the same digital future with social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram can enable citizens to access free information that they can leverage to positively determine their future. Our politicians will also increasingly find it hard to hide behind anonymity, cheap rhetoric, and false promises (#Theinternetneverforgets idiom). But we can also see a darker future than the above two scenarios. An example is China where only state-sanctioned content can appear on their digital platforms. Whether it be social, political, cultural, or economic platforms all are censored. As long as states have the power of territorial sovereignty, the issue of digital sovereignty is and will always be an option for states around the world including Kenya in the future. But the steps that decide where our journey will end start now and with the policy and regulatory decisions we will make with regard to our digital resources and platforms. Meanwhile, in the coming elections, Kenyans seem to have 3 choices, the Status Quo, the Cannabis Rebel, and the Christian Conservative on the ballot. We await to see their choice.
[1] Kietzmann, Jan H.; Kristopher Hermkens (2011). “Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media”. Business Horizons (Submitted manuscript). 54 (3): 241–25
[2] Obar, Jonathan A.; Wildman, Steve (2015). “Social media definition and the governance challenge: An introduction to the special issue”. Telecommunications Policy
[3] https://www.theafricareport.com/216515/kenya-2022-elections-how-will-the-low-number-of-young-registered-voters-play-out/
[4] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2020.00067/full
[5] Wells, W. D. (1975). Psychographics: a critical review. J. Mark. Res. 12, 196–213. doi: 10.1177/002224377501200210
[6] Chester, J., and Montgomery, K. (2017). The role of digital marketing in political campaigns. Internet Policy Rev. 6:4. doi: 10.14763/2017.4.773
[7] Privacy International (2020). Why We’re Concerned About Profiling and Micro-Targeting in Elections. Available online at: https://privacyinternational.org/news-analysis/3735/why-were-concerned-about-profiling-and-micro-targeting-elections (accessed March 26, 2020).