Presidential in Kenya: a campaign marked by the proliferation of "fake news"

Illustrative image of Twitter, taken on April 26, 2022 in Washington, DC AFP - OLIVIER DOULIERY

Text by: RFI Follow

2 mins

D-1 before the presidential election in Kenya.

22 million Kenyans are being called to the polls on Tuesday August 9 to elect Uhuru Kenyatta's successor.

The campaign that is ending was generally peaceful on the ground, but marked on social networks by the proliferation of "fake news", sometimes tinged with hate speech.

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With our correspondent in Nairobi,

What dominates in the home stretch of the presidential campaign are the messages accusing the two main candidates (

 and

, editor's note) of preparing to rig the election.

False information that seeks to delegitimize the results of the election.

But we have also seen for weeks fake polls, hijacked images, and a lot of doctored videos, some of which contain explicit threats aimed at one community or another.

We can also cite an alleged excerpt from a meeting by William Ruto which has circulated a lot, entitled: “ 

[the main community in Kenya, editor’s note]

 ”.

The video was actually doctored.

The vectors of this "fake news" are Twitter and Facebook, but also the TikTok application, which has made a remarkable breakthrough in Kenya.

In a report published in June, a researcher from the Mozilla Foundation claims to have spotted 130 disinformation videos on TikTok, sometimes with very violent content, viewed more than 4 million times in Kenya, which is of course only a sample. .

► To read also: Presidential in Kenya: civil society is preparing to monitor the regularity of the vote

Armies of trolls on social networks

The main Kenyan presidential candidates have recruited influencers, armies of trolls paid to promote their image to the detriment of their opponents.

So even if it means relaying and amplifying this biased, even hateful content.

The Mozilla Foundation denounces the existence of a veritable “ 

 ” which is said to be “ 

” in Kenya.

This is a source of concern in a country where elections are traditionally contested and marked by violence that sometimes intersects with ethnic divisions.

The fear is that these violent speeches online will stir up an already very volatile political landscape, or even be the trigger for violence in the event of a contested election.

All these networks claim to be taking measures, but they remain largely insufficient, either because they cannot keep pace with the proliferation of this content, or because their systems have flaws.

In April, Facebook said it deleted 42,000 posts in Kenya that violated its ethical guidelines.

But in the process, the NGO Global Witness managed, as part of an investigation, to publish about twenty advertisements spreading hate speech, going so far as to incite the rape or beheading of certain communities, which shows the ineffectiveness of its firewall.

As for

initiatives , they are multiplying in Kenya but are still insufficient to deal with the scale of the phenomenon.

► To read also: Presidential in Kenya: a test poll which promises to be disputed

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• Kenya

• Uhuru Kenyatta

• Social networks