‘Restricted’ digital/media repertoires in rural Kenya: a constructive critique

ABSTRACT

The ambition of this article is twofold and consists of an attempt to outline a problematic bias of research attention and interpretation, discernible in the field of studies that address the appropriation and usage of new media and networked communication technologies, as unfolding in Africa. Thus, I voice my concerns in respect to scholarly attempts, quantitative and qualitative in nature, to define those who are left behind at the bottom of the digital/media pyramid, in narrow deterministic terms. Based on qualitative interviews from fieldwork in Uasin Gishu County, Kenya I suggest a methodological–analytical approach to overcome this blind spot of attention and understanding, by show-casing a different strategy of data generation and interpretative reading. The article draws attention on the media practices and routines that are contextually embedded in the lifeworld concerns and pragmatic decisions of individuals located at the excluded end of the continuum of communication ecologies in Kenya. My in-depth presentation and discussion of two protagonists from rural Ziwa ward seeks to challenge commonplace characterisations of the causes and consequences of restricted digital/media repertoires. This includes a rejection of techno-centric, normative claims that define digital inclusion in narrow terms and the excluded as human impediments to democratic transition and development. Instead, I put forward a situated understanding of digital/media repertoires that while realised under constrained conditions, nonetheless allow people to address their lifeworld concerns. Concerns, here understood ‘as activities that matter to people' (Helle-Valle, J. (2019). Advocating causal analyses of media and social change by way of social mechanisms. Journal of African Media Studies, 11(2), 143–161. https://doi.org/10.1386/jams.11.2.143_1), in consequence affecting digital/media practices and vice versa.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital divide
• domestication of ICTs
• research methodology
• Kenya

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Norbert Wildermuth is associate professor at Roskilde University and has engaged with communication for social change, digital inclusion, e-participation, ICT-facilitated social accountability and media globalisation for more than three decades, based on wide and frequent research in India, Bhutan, Brazil, Zambia, Vietnam, Sierra Leone, Mocambique and Kenya.

Notes

1 Mobile internet/broadband connections stood at 26.8/10.8 million in 2016 (Wildermuth, 2018).

2 “Intersected” signifying here that these changes go hand in hand with broader transitions of social, cultural, political and economic character.

3 The remaining 28 informants, aged between 20 and 51 years, were from Uasin Gishu (13) and Nairobi (15). While most respondents from Eldoret and Nairobi were in the process or had completed a higher education, the majority of informants from semi-urban Langas, rural Ziwa and Burnt Forest had mainly primary and/or vocational levels of education. Five of the interviews were conducted with media professionals at Nairobi-based vernacular radio stations of great popularity in Uasin Gishu, respectively with prominent bloggers and chat forum moderators who focus thematically on the county. The gender ratio amongst all informants was 16 males to 14 females. More than half the number of informants in Uasin Gishu were selected not to belong to the dominant Kalenjin tribe. In the ethnically more heterogenous Nairobi, this ‘balance’ was likewise accomplished, in order to explore how cross-media interaction with local and national news is embedded in the construction and performance of multiple collective identities. In terms of digital literacy and digital skills, the informants covered the whole spectrum, though with an overweight of respondents positioned at the included end of the continuum, especially amongst the urban, higher educated and younger informants. That is, a substantial number of respondents, male and female, have demonstrated both the economic means, the motivation and skill to develop a complex and extended digital and cross-media news repertoires. A qualitative analysis of six informants from Uasin Gishu at the highly included and skilled end of the digital repertoire spectrum was presented as conference paper titled “Reflections on an Emerging Space of Online Deliberation in Kenya” at the IAMCR pre-conference “Era or Error of Transformation” in July 2019, other parts of my empirical data as paper on occasion of a Critical Perspectives workshop at Upsala University in December 2016.

4 Findings and methodological considerations of this survey have been published by Gustafsson and Nielsen (2017a, 2017b).

5 The amount of coverage of all three topics across new and legacy media, accessible in Kenya, could have been a valid indicator. An audience survey on their perceived relevance, another. However, this kind of specific user data has not been available.

6 See https://radio-africa.org/fm/fm.php?itu=Kenya&region=rif.

7 This number has decreased in recent years, with 57% of all adults owning a smart or feature phone in late 2018 (https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/03/07/use-of-smartphones-and-social-media-is-common-across-most-emerging-economies/).

8 An estimated 120,000 people, to their majority of Kikuyu origin, have been internally displaced in the area that became Uasin Gishu county in 2010, an area predominantly inhabited by members of the Kalenjin tribe.