Smart Phones and Social Bonds: Communication Technology and Inter-Ethnic Cooperation in Kenya

Abstract

The expansion of access to mobile phones in the developing world has provided new opportunities for development and peacebuilding institutions to reach communities, and for communities to develop local development and peacebuilding solutions. Kenya has seen a particularly high concentration of programming geared towards using mobile phones for banking, election monitoring and violence prevention, using crowdsourcing methods to collect and share information. While there have been a number of notable crowdsourcing programmes that have been successful at preventing violence, there remains limited theorisation in the peacebuilding community about why these successes occurred. Using Fearon and Laitin's (American Political Science Review 90 [1996]: 715–795) models of inter-ethnic cooperation, intra-group organising and inter-group policing, we explore whether success in crowdsourcing for violence prevention is a function of direct intra-community organising, or is an outcome of previously unavailable information being broadcast on traditional media such as radio.

Keywords::

• conflict prevention
• mobile phones
• communication technology
• cooperation
• Kenya
• elections
• ethnic conflict

Notes

¹ Safaricom is Kenya's mobile telephony services provider, with a reported market share of approximately 67%.

² These data were collected for Elizabeth Stones' (2015) dissertation project.

³ The dataset includes data on calls made and received daily and weekly, and SMS texts sent and received daily and weekly. Respondents reported an average of 9.2 calls received daily and 41 received weekly, with 7.9 calls made daily and 31 made weekly. They also reported an average of 24 text messages received daily and 134 weekly, with 36.4 sent daily and 167.1 sent weekly.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Charles Martin-Shields

CHARLES MARTIN-SHIELDS is a doctoral candidate at George Mason University's School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (SCAR). His research focuses on collective action problems and political economy of using technology for conflict prevention. Charles was a Fulbright–Clinton Fellow, advising Samoa's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology on telecommunications policy.

Elizabeth Stones

ELIZABETH STONES is a doctoral researcher at the Security Science Doctoral Training Centre at University College London (UCL). She researches the ways in which mobile telephony enhances and reduces security amongst crisis-affected populations. Elizabeth has worked with the GSMA on mobile disaster-and crisis response and with the EU on a range of conflict and development issues.