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Social media and political publics in Kenya

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Social media and political publics in Kenya

A Conversation with Steph Diepeveen

Alina Utrata
Jul 25, 2022
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Social media and political publics in Kenya

alinautrata.substack.com

Good morning, from a UK who just discovered what 40C heat is like—and that it does in fact melt your railways and roads . . .

In happier news, in this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, I talked to Steph Diepeveen, a senior research associate at Cambridge University, research fellow in digitalization at ODI and the author of the book “Searching for a New Kenya: Politics and Social Media on the Streets of Mombasa.” We discussed the way social media use operates in Kenya, the difference between physical and digital public spaces, how Big Tech corporations’ designs affects political discourse and what we can learn about social media by looking outside the Western context. 

You can follow Steph on Twitter @sdiep, or order her book here.

As always, you can listen to it here or subscribe here (Spotify) or here (Apple Podcasts). If you like us, please rate, review and share the Anti-Dystopians to help us get new listeners. If you want to support the production of the show, you can visit here.


Further reading from the episode:

(Many thanks to Steph for compiling these resources!)

  • Steph’s book, Searching for a New Kenya

  • Steph’s collaborative work on African languages and autocomplete (i.e it doesn’t work in Amharic) – open access article here.

  • Social media as a political problem in Kenya — the Conversation

  • Some interesting Mozilla studies on disinfo in Kenya:

    • TikTok and the current elections

    •  Disinformation industry in Kenya

  • Nanjala Nyabola's book for an accessible and critical overview of the history/evolution of digital media and politics in Kenya — Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics: How the Internet Era Is Transforming Politics in Kenya

  • A 2020 article on Free Basics — The Rise and Fall… and Rise Again of Facebook’s Free Basics: Civil Society and the Challenge of Resistance to Corporate Connectivity Projects.


What I’ve been reading

  • Have had this one bookmarked for a while (over a year), but it is everything you wanted from a story about hacking, corporate control and McDonald's ice cream machines: They Hacked McDonald’s Ice Cream Machines—and Started a Cold War

  • If you enjoyed Paris Marx on the podcast a few weeks ago, here is their article in Lit Hub How Corporate America Created Car Culture—And What We Can Do To Change It

  • A company that claimed it would use the blockchain to help reforest the Earth accidentally set off a 35,000 acre wildfire in Spain.

  • Minecraft has rejected NFTs, calling it out for profiteering.

  • Amazon blocked abortion-related advertising on its platform days after Roe v. Wade was overturned

  • Avast has written a guide to how to digitally disentangle yourself from a former abusive partner.

  • If you want a longer book recommendation, I’ve been reading Adventure Capitalism: A History of Libertarian Exit, from the Era of Decolonization to the Digital Age and it is EXCELLENT


Tweet(s) of the week

Someone at HP has been reading Cory Doctorow’s dystopian novels.…

Twitter avatar for @Wendigoon8
Wendigoon @Wendigoon8
Our HP printer hasn’t been working for a month and every manner of troubleshooting, resets, changing ink cartridges, didn’t seem to work. After calling HP, they said the debit card on file had expired so they manually disabled our printer. In unrelated news, I’m now radicalized
7:31 PM ∙ Jul 20, 2022
113,466Likes12,376Retweets

And a reminder for those of you who are living through Europe’s climate catastrophe heatwave . . .

Twitter avatar for @blkahn
Brian Kahn @blkahn
Just a reminder
Image
11:23 PM ∙ Jun 27, 2021
51,368Likes8,834Retweets
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