10.25598/JKM/2020-12.4
Okoth, Grace Brenda W.
Grace Brenda W.
Okoth
How Kenyans on Twitter use visuals as a form of political protest
University of Salzburg
2020
FOS: Media and communications
en
Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 International
The growth of the Internet in the last two decades has helped increase political and civic engagement and scrutiny. The growth of a digital economy in Kenya has led to the emergenceof a vibrant online community with 89.7 % of the population having access to the Internet. This paper examines how Kenyans on Twitter (KOT) use visuals as a form of political protest.Using an open source data tool, the paper provides results from a qualitative analysis of 200 tweets that drove three political hashtags with a special focus on the most prominent memes, cartoons and pictures. This research finds that #KOT uses visuals to highlight government corruption and incompetence through mockery, condemnation and humour. These findings contribute to a growing body of literature that studies the relationship between new communication technologies and connective action.