Tensions, Confrontations, and Consensus: WhatsApp Use in Kenyan Electoral Politics

IF 5.5 1区文学 Q1 COMMUNICATION

Social Media + Society Pub Date : 2025-02-20 DOI:10.1177/20563051251315252

Job Allan Wefwafwa, Bob Wekesa, Iginio Gagliardone

{"title":"Tensions, Confrontations, and Consensus: WhatsApp Use in Kenyan Electoral Politics","authors":"Job Allan Wefwafwa, Bob Wekesa, Iginio Gagliardone","doi":"10.1177/20563051251315252","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Social media has enhanced culturally grounded debates and ethnicity-based exclusionism during Kenya’s WhatsApp group deliberations. These practices are often more pronounced during elections when WhatsApp becomes a social media platform of choice for various groups. Exclusionism takes at least two vectors. On the one hand, tensions and confrontations emerge as electoral deliberations proceed. On the other hand, consensus on WhatsApp spaces also emerges during the electoral deliberations as in-groups forge common ground. To analyze the splits in elections-based deliberations on WhatsApp, the article starts with an interrogation of how history and culture inform the Kenyan people’s use of WhatsApp space for electoral deliberations. Among others, the people use the platform to resolve perceived and real political injustices perpetrated in the society by previous governments, resulting in tensions and confrontations. The article argues that the origin of the tensions is the fact that most African people have dual “citizenship,” whereby they simultaneously belong to their ethnic communities while being part of the broader Kenyan nation. It theoretically engages Ekeh and Langmia to argue that the people concurrently fall into the primordial publics and civic publics, leading to dialectical tensions, confrontation, and consensus between the two categorizations. These tensions, confrontations, and consensuses spill over into the WhatsApp groups, with electoral deliberations registering the peak in these splits. The case of the Bungoma County and its linkage to the broader Kenyan nation serve as the site for empirical data. The method for data collection is qualitative. The article uses participant observation and face-to-face interviews to investigate how the people’s historical and cultural values inform their use of WhatsApp space during electoral deliberations. The findings reveal how the people’s historical and cultural values shape their use of WhatsApp space. The implication of the research is to explore the African people’s cultural adaptation of technology and to invite more Afrocentric theorization on technology adaptation in African societies.","PeriodicalId":47920,"journal":{"name":"Social Media + Society","volume":"89 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.5000,"publicationDate":"2025-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Social Media + Society","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251315252","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Social media has enhanced culturally grounded debates and ethnicity-based exclusionism during Kenya’s WhatsApp group deliberations. These practices are often more pronounced during elections when WhatsApp becomes a social media platform of choice for various groups. Exclusionism takes at least two vectors. On the one hand, tensions and confrontations emerge as electoral deliberations proceed. On the other hand, consensus on WhatsApp spaces also emerges during the electoral deliberations as in-groups forge common ground. To analyze the splits in elections-based deliberations on WhatsApp, the article starts with an interrogation of how history and culture inform the Kenyan people’s use of WhatsApp space for electoral deliberations. Among others, the people use the platform to resolve perceived and real political injustices perpetrated in the society by previous governments, resulting in tensions and confrontations. The article argues that the origin of the tensions is the fact that most African people have dual “citizenship,” whereby they simultaneously belong to their ethnic communities while being part of the broader Kenyan nation. It theoretically engages Ekeh and Langmia to argue that the people concurrently fall into the primordial publics and civic publics, leading to dialectical tensions, confrontation, and consensus between the two categorizations. These tensions, confrontations, and consensuses spill over into the WhatsApp groups, with electoral deliberations registering the peak in these splits. The case of the Bungoma County and its linkage to the broader Kenyan nation serve as the site for empirical data. The method for data collection is qualitative. The article uses participant observation and face-to-face interviews to investigate how the people’s historical and cultural values inform their use of WhatsApp space during electoral deliberations. The findings reveal how the people’s historical and cultural values shape their use of WhatsApp space. The implication of the research is to explore the African people’s cultural adaptation of technology and to invite more Afrocentric theorization on technology adaptation in African societies.

查看原文本刊更多论文

紧张、对抗和共识：WhatsApp在肯尼亚选举政治中的使用

在肯尼亚的WhatsApp小组讨论中，社交媒体加强了基于文化的辩论和基于种族的排斥主义。在选举期间，当WhatsApp成为各种群体的首选社交媒体平台时，这些做法往往更为明显。排外主义至少有两个载体。一方面，紧张和对抗随着选举审议的进行而出现。另一方面，在选举审议期间，随着内部团体形成共识，人们对WhatsApp空间的共识也出现了。为了分析WhatsApp上基于选举的审议的分歧，本文首先询问历史和文化如何影响肯尼亚人使用WhatsApp空间进行选举审议。其中，人们利用这个平台来解决前任政府在社会上犯下的感知和现实的政治不公正，导致紧张和对抗。这篇文章认为，紧张局势的根源在于大多数非洲人拥有双重“国籍”，即他们既属于自己的民族社区，又属于更广泛的肯尼亚国家。从理论上讲，Ekeh和Langmia认为人们同时陷入原始公众和公民公众，导致两种分类之间的辩证紧张，对抗和共识。这些紧张、对抗和共识蔓延到WhatsApp群中，选举审议是这些分歧的最高峰。本戈马县的案例及其与更广泛的肯尼亚国家的联系为经验数据提供了依据。数据收集的方法是定性的。本文采用参与者观察和面对面访谈来调查人们的历史和文化价值观如何在选举审议期间告知他们使用WhatsApp空间。调查结果揭示了人们的历史和文化价值观如何影响他们对WhatsApp空间的使用。本研究的意义在于探索非洲人对技术的文化适应，并在非洲社会中引入更多以非洲为中心的技术适应理论。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Social Media + Society COMMUNICATION-

CiteScore

9.20

自引率

3.80%

发文量

111

审稿时长

12 weeks

期刊介绍： Social Media + Society is an open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal that focuses on the socio-cultural, political, psychological, historical, economic, legal and policy dimensions of social media in societies past, contemporary and future. We publish interdisciplinary work that draws from the social sciences, humanities and computational social sciences, reaches out to the arts and natural sciences, and we endorse mixed methods and methodologies. The journal is open to a diversity of theoretic paradigms and methodologies. The editorial vision of Social Media + Society draws inspiration from research on social media to outline a field of study poised to reflexively grow as social technologies evolve. We foster the open access of sharing of research on the social properties of media, as they manifest themselves through the uses people make of networked platforms past and present, digital and non. The journal presents a collaborative, open, and shared space, dedicated exclusively to the study of social media and their implications for societies. It facilitates state-of-the-art research on cutting-edge trends and allows scholars to focus and track trends specific to this field of study.