LSE researcher Nick Benequista is researching networked journalism in East Africa. Here’s his take from Nairobi on the complexities of media coverage of the tightly-contested Kenyan elections

Benequista, Nicholas

LSE Research Online

2013-3-11Kenyan elections and the media: complex illusions (guestblog)blogs.lse.ac.uk /polis/2013/03/11/kenyan-elections-and-the-media-complex-illusions-guest-blog/LSE  researcher Nick Benequista is researching networked journalism in East Africa. Here’s his take fromNairobi on the complexities of media coverage of the tightly-contested Kenyan elections.The national elections last week revealed an uneasyrelationship between Kenyans and the mass media. Kenyanshave been given an unsatisfactory choice between the half-truths of the foreign press and the illusions of their own nationalmedia.On the surface, Kenyans appear to have rejected the half-truthcommon in foreign reports which says that the country’s tribalpolitics have sewn hatred and prejudice amongst its citizens;instead they have embraced the illusion, more commonamongst national media, that the tragic violence that followedthe 2007 elections has taught people that they share more incommon with each other than they do with their leaders.But the illusion comes at a high cost. Even those who publicly praised the Kenyan media’s overtures to unity willprivately confess that they harbour concerns, particularly about the national media’s self-censorship. In the fear oftelling dangerous half-truths, an extreme relativism – that all truths are equal – has been permitted.Fortunate Kenya?Still, the solution isn’t merely in the fit: a version of Western investigative journalism, but without all the Westernprejudices. Kenya is actually quite fortunate, in a way, because in this awkward encounter of foreign media, nationalmedia and new media, it seems clear that something quite unique is needed, and, indeed, possible. Kenyanjournalism can set a new, better standard.Election coverage in Kenya last week gave us a glimpse of that possibility.Mass media is where we go when we are at our most anxious, where we go to be together and to find comfort in ourtogetherness. And while the foreign press is no place to gather for Kenyans (not to say that it hasn’t been for others,as in the Arab Spring), national media have been.The 24-hour television coverage often featured a panel of guests providing running commentary throughout theweek as the parties rallied, people queued and finally as the problematic tallying process dragged on. Thesecommentators did little to help us to determine the truthfulness of statements, including claims of vote rigging byRaila Odinga’s coalition party, but they did provide background, history and context.They echoed our own anxieties, questions and thoughts and allowed us to imagine the many others across thecountry who were, like us, hoping for peace – whatever the outcome. Their conversation was an extension of ours athome or in the bar. This effect was especially powerful for those who were simultaneously in conversation on Twitter,which is increasingly fused with English-language television in Kenya.Accolades for the national media came in a flood on Twitter, just as the mockery and the derision of the foreignpress had come earlier in the week.1/2Illusion of UnityKenyans are right to choose unity over division. But this is an illusion because it fails to recognize the vastly differentways that people have understood this national event, and not just whether the elections were credible, though thattoo is important. The media scholar Roger Silverstone (who was influenced strongly by Hannah Arendt’s philosophy– itself influenced by the Holocaust) had this to say about such illusions.“And illusions, of course, though they have their costs, can be massively sustaining. The illusion ofconnection is grounded in the refusal of otherness. It is based on the private masquerading as thepublic, the separate masquerading as the shared, the different masquerading as the same, thedistant masquerading as the close-at-hand, the unequal masquerading as the equal. In all thesedimensions the masquerade is profound in its ethical consequences.”All this to say that the aim to counterbalance the grim reports from the foreign media is misguided. Kenya’s nationalmedia narrative should not be reactionary; it is not a counterbalance. It should serve national needs, regardless ofwhat the foreign press is saying.Narrative ChallengeAmong those national needs is certainly the preservation of peace, but Kenyan media cannot forever remain a politespace where differences are swept under the rug to be replaced by a consensually agreed (rather than imposed)agenda of nationalistic propaganda. The good stories, the positive angles, should be included, no doubt, and peopleneed to be reassured in times of crisis. The real challenge to forming a national narrative, however, is how to includeconflict, injustice, suffering, and inequality – how to promote mutual understanding on the themes that divide us.Peace journalism, civic journalism, development journalism: there have been many names given to designate a formof journalism with higher aspirations, though few good examples. The Kenyan media has demonstrated the will andresponsibility needed to demonstrate that this long-standing hope is no illusion.This article by Nick Benequista. Nicholas Benequista is former journalist and now a PhD researcher at theDepartment of Media and Communications. He is currently conducting an action research project in Kenya toexplore the very possibilities he discusses here. You can follow the project on www.networkednews.org and followNicholas on Twitter @benequista. Copyright © 2014 London School of Economics and Political Science2/2

Kenyan elections and the media: complex illusions (guest blog)

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