Digital Dissidents or Whistle-Blowers? A Critical Analysis of Microbloggers in Kenya

Abstract

Increased access to Internet technologies in Kenya has necessitated the thriving of political communication in digital media spaces such as Twitter and Facebook. It has also led to the emergence of political influencers who shape political conversations in various ways. While these individuals are celebrated by some, they have often faced government repression, arrests, threats and forced disappearances, and even some of them killed. The overriding reasons given by the government to justify such a repression have always been to curb malicious dissemination of messages that is a threat to national security. While their role in public conversations has always been contentious – dissident for some and whistle-blowers for others, their role in shaping public conversations cannot be ignored. Contextualising their works in Kenya’s mediated environment, this study investigates how two prominent bloggers/influencers employ social media to disrupt, expose, and resist authoritarianism in Kenya. By examining the online activities of two bloggers – Robert Alai and Cyprian Nyakundi – I illustrate the larger dynamics of online activism in Kenya, how their online activities can lead to different political outcomes and at the same time lead to an understanding of the different forms of anti-authoritarian resistance taking place in postcolonial Kenya.

Keywords
online activism, resistance, whistle-blowers, censorship, bloggers, Kenya

Full text

DOI: 10.4324/9781003276326-12
9 Digital Dissidents or Whistle-
Blowers? A Critical Analysis
of Microbloggers in Kenya
Job Mwaura
Introduction
Kenya’s politics since the colonial era has always been vibrant and youth-led.
The Mau Mau armed struggle against colonialism was led by the youthful
Dedan Kimathi. The rise of the Kenyan nationalist movement in the 1950s
and 1960s and later in the 1980s and early 1990s was also led by young indi-
viduals who included Harry Thuku, Tom Mboya, Raila Odinga, Gitobu
Imanyara, and several others. It is this same youthful population that actively
used not just armed struggle but also other tools such as the media to ght
against colonial and postcolonial injustices. Since 1940s to date, various forms
of media in Kenya have been used as platforms to express dissent, expose
corruption, and push for sociopolitical change. The media, especially alter-
native media, has been regarded as instrumental in some of the sociopolitical
successes Kenya enjoys today such as the reintroduction of multipartyism in
1992 and the promulgation of Kenya’s current constitution in the year 2010.
Even though there have been sociopolitical successes in Kenya linked to
the vibrant use of media tools for change, they have come at a great cost.
Repression from various regimes has been witnessed over the years. During
the colonial era, Kenyan nationalists who used the media to push for change
such as Gakaara wa Wanjau, Harry Thuku, John Cege, and others faced
repression from the colonial government. They were jailed or detained with-
out trial. Although Jomo Kenyatta used media tools to ght colonialism dur-
ing his stay in London and as an editor of Mwigwithania, a publication by
Kikuyu Central Association (KCA), he greatly suppressed those who used
the same media tools to criticise him or his government when he became the
rst president of Kenya. During President Daniel Moi’s regime in 1980 and
1990s, media producers faced the toughest wrath. Individuals such as Gitobu
Imanyara, Onyango Oloo, Koigi wa Wamwere and others were detained for
owning or publishing what the government regarded as seditious newspapers
and articles.
The end of President Moi’s presidency in early 2000s was marked by
increased freedom of expression and a further opening of the media space in
Kenya. During President Kibaki’s reign, Kenya witnessed increased licencing
Mwaura, J. (J2022) Digital Dissident or Whistle-blowers? A Critical Analysis of
Micro bloggers in Kenya. In Farooq A. Kperogi (Ed.) – Digital Dissidence and
Social Media Censorship in Africa. Routledge.

176 Job Mwaura
of media houses such as many new FM radio and TV stations, newspapers,
and thriving alternative media platforms. In addition, increased digitisation
necessitated by government ICT (Information Communication Technology)
projects during the Kibaki era led to increase in Internet speeds which in turn
led to increased numbers of Kenyans in online spaces. Kenya began to appear
in global blogosphere when in 2003 Kenya’s rst blog, The Kenya Bloggers
Webring (KBW), was created by Daudi Were, which connected Kenyans at
home and in the diaspora (Ndemo & Weiss, 2017). Another tech leader at
that time was David Kobia who established the Mashada blog which became
the most popular online platform connecting Kenyans in Europe, USA, and
locally connected Kenyans. Nyabola (2018) notes that:
As part of a broader, uncoordinated eort to retain links with Kenya, many
in the diaspora and at home had by 2007 become active bloggers. Some
of the blogs that had hitherto had apolitical briefs became more politi-
cal as access to reliable information remained scarce. Internet forums like
Mashada or the Concerned Kenyan Writers group became heated sites for
conversations and argument, some of it extremely productive and some of
it replicating the contours of the oine violence. Overall, online forums
opened a new space for political discourse in Kenya that was being stied
in the traditional media and oine society. (p. 90)
With the coming of social media platforms from Silicon Valley such as
Facebook and Twitter, the inuence of blogs like Mashada declined. Hersman
(2008) mentioned that during the 2007/2008 election violence in Kenya,
Mashada forum had turned out as a forum for “vitriolic and heated ethnic
discussions going on around politics in the contested elections, mirroring
Kenyan society at the time”.
Although some other blogs and forums continued to operate, such as
the Jukwaa Forum, founded by Oloo Onyango, most of the bloggers from
Mashada Forum and elsewhere began to ood Facebook and Twitter, with
some even using their previous blogging identities. Over the years, Kenyans
have always coalesced around hashtag #KOT (Kenyans on Twitter) on
Twitter and #MKZ (Mukuru kwa Zuckerberg) on Facebook creating a
huge community of the platform’s users. Although these communities are
overwhelmingly urban, educated and highly localised, #KOT and #MKZ
have emerged as forces and phenomena able to move and act as a unit while
remaining deeply divided within themselves. Ogola (2019) in his analysis of
Kenya’s digital practices mentions that:
#KOT has a notable reputation for scaling up various political and social
issues and stories in the country. Once the stories go viral, they routinely
make “news” in the mainstream legacy press whose coverage still seem
to validate their signicance … Most conversations on KOT are gener-
ally scaled up or popularised by a few well-known bloggers, activists,

Digital Dissidents or Whistle-Blowers? 177
politicians, celebrities, and journalists. Notable names include Ory
Okolloh, Robert Alai, Cyprian Nyakundi, Larry Madowo and Boniface
Mwangi, among others.
Twitter and Facebook have become popular as sites of free expression and
have been characterised by political debates mainly led by Kenya’s youthful,
educated, and digital savvy population. Portland Communications (2018)
found out that Kenyans on Twitter are more political than their counter-
parts in other parts of the world. The online political debates are however a
reection of Kenya’s culture since the colonial era – a culture that is deeply
entrenched in politics of various nature. Kenya’s colonial legacies, postco-
lonial issues, governance, and various levels of inequalities have often char-
acterised political debates online and oine in the current era. As a result,
this has led to an emergence of new crop of political commentators, some
of whom are so popular that their opinion is highly sought after in political
discussions even by the mainstream media. While these individuals are cele-
brated as political commentators and whistle-blowers in certain quarters, the
government on the other hand has considered them as digital dissidents and
introduced overt and covert censorship on them.
This chapter discusses the works of two bloggers and how their similari-
ties and dierences in using Twitter can lead to dierent political outcomes
and at the same time lead to an understanding of the dierent forms of anti-
authoritarian resistance taking place in postcolonial Kenya.
Political Communication on Social Media
In the current era, social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube,
and many others represent an ideal vehicle and information base to gauge pub-
lic opinion on policies and political positions. Over the last few years, there
has been a growing body of literature focusing on the role of social media in
political communication. The growing focus on social media as a political tool
implies a fundamental change in traditional public communication.
Klinger and Svensson (2014) in their analysis of mass media and network
media logic argued that with regard to the underlying communication norms
and practices related to media development, dissemination, and use, social
media networks are distinguished by a distinct but overlapping rationale from
that of conventional mass media. They set aside three issues that distinguish
traditional media and network media in the context of political communi-
cation. Firstly, in terms of production, mass media has an expansive choice
of information and the generation of content by professional journalists
according to news values while in networked media content production is
inexpensive since it is done by everyday users according to their individual
preferences and optimising attention.
Secondly, in terms of distribution of content, mass media logic adopts
information that is selected by experts or professional gatekeepers based on

178 Job Mwaura
conventional news standards, which is transmitted to a xed subscription-
paying audience while in networked media logic users are like intermediaries
sharing common content inside networks of like-minded others, often like
a chain letter.
Lastly, in terms of media usage, mass media is based on professional selec-
tion, area-bound mass audience with minimal selective exposure focused on
passive data consumption while networked media is based on interest-bound
and similar-minded peer networks with highly selective interaction-oriented
visibility by updating practices.
These three issues of content production, distribution, and media usage
have several implications for political communication on networked media.
Klinger and Svensson (2014) mentioned that in pursuit of gaining maximum
publicity, politicians try to build and maintain as many ties and links as pos-
sible by making friends with as many other users as possible to get exposure
to themselves, the party, and their social media content. The authors further
mention that a signicant result of network media is that it is not possible to
direct political communication on social media sites to mainstream audiences
as there are no mainstream audiences. It is necessary, therefore, to be linked
to many others because it signals popularity.
Bloggers and Political Inuencers in Political Communication
Apart from politicians using networked media to popularise their ideologies
and gain a following, bloggers have asserted themselves into the national
political discourse. Since virality of political content is so important in politi-
cal communication, bloggers have become “increasingly important addressee
for politicians” (Klinger & Svensson, 2014: 1253), since they increase the
visibility of political information and help in increasing Internet trac
in the country. Khamis and Fowler (2020) in their study of Arab resistance in the
diaspora communities from Saudi Arabia and Egypt noted that technology
has been impacting normative ideas about the relationship between genera-
tions, allowing young people to speak and amplify each other on social media
platforms.
Bloggers and political inuencers are mostly consumers of media products
who create and generate their own content and feeding it back to the centre.
Social media platforms and web 2.0 technologies have been important in
facilitating this creation and co-creation of content, publishing, and dissem-
ination of political information.
In the Kenyan context, political inuencers/bloggers have become so
critical that mainstream media organisations rely on them to gauge what is
trending before covering it in their outlets. In view of the billions they have
spent, media owners are understandably jittery about this situation. For jour-
nalists, particularly veteran scribes who are keen to protect the credibility of
the art from bloggers viewed as propagators of fake news, the situation is no
easy one. By improving their social media presence, several media houses are

Digital Dissidents or Whistle-Blowers? 179
reinventing themselves. We are also experiencing the rise of media personal-
ities whose views on trending news items on social media create considerably
higher levels of debate than other news items. As such, bloggers and political
inuencers have become very inuential in Kenya’s political communication
sphere.
As an example, Al-Saqaf and Christensen (2017) analysed network responses
during the Westgate Mall attack in Nairobi and found out that at the end of a
seven-day period, networks around @robertalai (Robert Alai’s Twitter handle)
(the circled large dot) were the most active as indicated in Figure 9.1.
Although political debates in Kenya, just like in many other places in the
world, are still dominated by traditional media outlets and political elites,
political bloggers/inuencers, as Meraz and Papacharissi (2016) have noted,
Figure 9.1 The networks of responses at the end of the rst day on which the Westgare
attack happened.
Source: Adapted from Al-Saqaf and Christensen (2017) Media Conict and Democratisation:
Mainstream Media Power and Lost Orphans: The for mation of Twitter networks in times of con-
ict. Working Paper. MeCoDEM. ISSN 2057-4002 (Unpublished).

180 Job Mwaura
have the potential to break this dominance especially because there is
increased preference to peer-to-peer information sharing, which is a trend on
social networking sites. In an investigation by Ceron et al. (2016) on whether
social media platforms in Italy can play an agenda-setting position or whether
the agenda power of conventional media outlets, including in online world,
remained unchanged, they found out that the rise of social media platforms
have altered agenda-setting patterns, but that traditional mass media still has
the “rst-level-agenda-setting power” (p. 7). Camaj (2014) explains rst-level-
agenda-setting as how the prominence of issues in news media reporting
aects people’s opinion of their important concerns in their country. Nyabola
(2018) states the following with regard to the relationship between news out-
lets and social media users in the Kenyan context:
News outlets rely on social media to gauge what’s trendy before covering
it on their outlets. Bloggers are sought out to give their opinions on key
political issues. We are no longer waiting for the media to tell us what
we think about specic phenomena but reacting to the phenomena and
building stories around it that shape all future thinking or behaviour
around these phenomena. (p. 112)
However, Ceron et al. (2016) acknowledge that when trust in traditional
media goes down and the consumers are upset, social media platforms can
rise quickly as a source of information. Mwaura (2020), citing a survey report
by We Are Social, noted that 34 per cent of Kenyans who took part in in the
survey mentioned they had high trust in social media to access news and
information, taking the rst position in Africa and sixth globally. Although
traditional news media in Kenya have also dominated online platforms, there
is a possibility that platform users also rely on other online sources, such as
bloggers, for news and information.
With the eruption of the Arab Spring in 2011, there was a rapid rise in the
use of social media tools to coordinate eorts against authoritarian regimes
not only in North Africa and the Arab world but also in many other places
globally. In Egypt, for instance, political bloggers and digital dissidents played
an inuential role in toppling Hosni Mubarak’s authoritarian regime by
mobilising people online to the streets and to Tahrir square to protest their
removal (Barrons, 2012; Eltantawy & Wiest, 2011; Lim, 2012). This wave of
global protests against authoritarianism and corruption, distrust in authority,
and a desire for participation and self-expression also happened in Kenya.
This was obviously necessitated by technology and, as Khamis and Fowler
(2020) acknowledged, “technology is impacting normative ideas about the
relationship between generations – allowing young people specially to speak
out of turn, nd and amplify each other” (p. 33). Versions of the #Occupy
movement such as #OccupyHarambeeAvenue, #OccupyPlayground, and
#OccupyParliament happened in Kenya and they were mainly led by polit-
ical bloggers such as Boniface Mwangi and other grassroots civil societies

Digital Dissidents or Whistle-Blowers? 181
(Mwaura, 2019). Therefore, political bloggers and inuencers have been at
the forefront of sociopolitical change in various countries around the world.
However, since blogging practices, unlike traditional media, are not regu-
lated, they are more likely to spread false news and misinformation, because
they often lack adequate verication tools. In some cases, certain bloggers
use clickbait tactics to spread hate speech or misinformation about political
enemies or to use other manipulation strategies such as the deployment of
troll farms to inuence the views of a broader audience on certain national or
global issues. One of the most frequent misinformation techniques employed
by bloggers is using anonymous sources that they are not able to verify them-
selves. In Kenya, there have been instances where political bloggers are hired
by individuals in certain political parties to spread certain narratives on polit-
ical enemies or certain issues to the wider public. Several other bloggers have
been used to encourage ethnic hatred and deepen existing cultural divides
in Kenya.
In general, social media has not only led to plenty of signicant political
action in Kenya but also triggered a reaction from the government which
has tried to re-establish control over it. In the next section, I discuss how the
government has been putting restrictions on blogging activities in Kenya.
Government Repression on Internet Users
The Arab Spring in 2011 that sent a wave of protests around the world
took many governments by surprise. “Popular energy”1 necessitated by the
increased use of digital media in 2011 led to signicant political action in
Africa and beyond which also triggered a reaction from governments which
tried to re-establish control over it. As witnessed in Egypt, Tunisia, and some
other Arab countries, this popular energy changed situations within a notice-
ably brief period from a few disgruntled social media posts to full-blown
revolution within a matter of days. Since then, in the never-ending tango
between people and their governments, the Internet has become the newest
frontline globally.
Governments around the world have in the last few years devised several
ways to put control on the use of digital media, particularly because the pub-
lic threatens the existing power structures in addition to using those tactics as
an excuse for securitisation projects. Several other governments not only in
Africa but the world over have implemented Internet shutdowns at dierent
times, mostly during political upheavals. But “internet shutdown” as a term
is ambiguous, and Merchant and Stremlau (2020) talk about this ambiguity
in their discussion of Internet shutdowns in Africa. They argue that although
many researchers believe that Internet shutdowns are deliberate and are
inspired by governments to curtail critical and uncomfortable speech, recent
literature demonstrates that there are other reasons outside government cen-
sorship that can cause Internet shudowns. Internet shutdowns can be caused
by extreme weather that can lead to cables being unintentionally cut. Attacks

182 Job Mwaura
from hostile foreign governments, rogue hackers, or ISP-led slowdowns can
also lead to Internet shudowns.
Other forms of repression or censorship on Internet users by the gov-
ernment also include policy changes such as those related to curbing hate
speech and others related to securitisation or civil control. In Kenya, when
social media started being used as an information hub and for amplifying
political unrests, the government and policymakers took note of it. Nyabola
(2018) notes that since Kenya has constantly been hovering at the margins of
authoritarianism, the state has repeatedly tried to pass laws to curtail political
organisations on social media, hinting at the rising political potency of these
spaces. The Kenya Information and Communication Act (KICA) of 2013
had, for instance, permitted the arrest of citizen who are found guilty of the
“misuse of communication devices”. The government was at liberty to dene
what it meant by “misuse of communication devices”. The courts repealed
this law and termed it as unconstitutional.
In 2019, the KICA (amendment bill) was introduced, and it sought to
regulate the use of social media by requiring bloggers or anyone who uses
social media to register with Communication Authority of Kenya. The bill
also gave The Communication Authority the authority to develop a blog-
gers’ code of conduct and to restrict the usage of social media by minors.
Although this bill was shelved since it was considered unconstitutional by
the Kenya National Assembly Information, Communication, and Innovation
Committee in October 2019, its reintroduction in parliament cannot be
ruled out. Further, in 2018, The Computer Misuse and Cybercrime Act No.
5 of 2018 was enacted by The Parliament of Kenya, which provided oences
relating to computer systems, to enable timely and eective detection, prohi-
bition, prevention, responsive investigation and prohibiting of computer and
cybercrimes in Kenya. Shortly after enactment, the High Court of Kenya
issued conservatory orders setting aside the enforcement of 26 sections of
the Act which were considered violations of the constitutional provision on
freedom of opinion, freedom of expression, freedom of the media, freedom
and security of the person, right to privacy, right to property, and the right to
a fair hearing. After a protracted court battle between Bloggers Association
of Kenya and Article 19 versus the government of Kenya and Parliament, the
High Court lifted the conservatory orders arming the 26 sections as con-
stitutional. The law does not clarify what “misuse of computers” means and
instead discusses the criminalisation of “false news”, but the term is loosely
interpreted, thus, opening doors for dierent interpretations, and law enforc-
ers may take advantage of this dierence to unilaterally interpret what “fake
news” implies. In addition, law enforcers can conceal government miscon-
duct and suppress the expression of critical views and the political opposition,
activists, human rights advocates, and journalists from speaking freely.
But even before the enactment of these laws, digital spaces in Kenya
had already begun experiencing government repression or censorship.
Bloggers and journalists were already being killed, arrested, or intimidated

Digital Dissidents or Whistle-Blowers? 183
by government forces especially those calling for sociopolitical change.
For instance, activist Boniface Mwangi was sued by the Deputy President
William Ruto for defamation in a tweet in which he linked him to the death
of Twitter superuser and businessperson, Jacob Juma. In 2016, Jacqueline
Okuta and Jackson Njeru who are admins of a popular Facebook group in
Kenya “Buyer beware-Kenya” were sued for posting or allowing members
of the group to post derogatory statements. The High Court of Kenya, how-
ever, dismissed the case. It ruled that freedom of speech and expression is a
highly cherished right in a democracy and is an advantage to the autonomy
and general development of a thinking society.
Elsewhere, a WhatsApp group admin by the name of Longton Jamil of a
popular WhatsApp group in Kajiado county called Kajiado Unity of Purpose
was arrested for sharing “fake news”. The authorities said that Jamil had
posted alarming messages and even pictures of dead bodies on the WhatsApp
group. Allan Wadi, another Kenyan blogger, was also arrested and sentenced
for two years in prison for allegedly insulting the President of Kenya, Uhuru
Kenyatta, and for spreading what the authorities termed as ethnic hate speech,
a term whose meaning is still contested.
The above cases provide a glimpse of the ongoing forms of repression and
censorship on social media users by the Kenyan government. It also shows
how, in spite of changes in media landscape, things have remained the same
since pre-independence period in terms of repressing and censoring media
producers and consumers.
But these kinds of repressions are happening elsewhere, and not just in
Kenya. In Zimbabwe, for instance, Pastor Evan Mawarire was forced into exile
for calling for political protests on social media under the hashtag #ThisFlag.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), youth activists using the
#Telema hashtag in 2015 were rounded up and arrested by DRC forces. The
more people move into online spaces to raise their voices and express them-
selves, the more the power structure pushes back, sometimes violently. It is
obvious that governments feel threatened by the widespread embrace of dig-
ital spaces. In the next section, I highlight the works of two prominent blog-
gers in Kenya who have regularly faced state repression for what they publish
on social media. While the state views them as subversive digital dissidents,
the public and civil rights groups view them as whistle-blowers.
Robert Alai
Robert Alai is a popular Kenyan blogger, entrepreneur, and cyber-activist.
He has been active on Kenya’s digital sphere since the early 2000s. According
to Twitter’s “join date” section, Robert Alai joined Twitter, where he has
become famous, in October 2008. He is also linked to the ownership of
popular blogs Kahawa Tungu2 and Techmtaa.3 He has been in trouble with
the Kenyan authorities on many occasions and has been imprisoned several
times (arrested 30 times since 2012) for his widely regarded political and

184 Job Mwaura
often personal attacks, especially on politicians, government ocials, and
business leaders. As of 2021, he has ongoing court cases mostly on defamation
and what the government calls “misuse of computer” to spread hate or “fake
ne ws”.
Robert Alai’s Twitter prole’s bears the following quote: There is no comfort
in truth, pain is all you nd, a quote by British musician George Michael (1963–
2016). This quote perhaps represents his quest for the “truth” in Kenya’s soci-
opolitical debates. To win trust and gain a huge audience, bloggers like him
pride themselves on being transparent and truthful, in the face of mainstream
media’s practice of controls and self-censorship. Nimmo and Combs (1992)
describe bloggers as citizen journalists or the fth estate – a watchdog of the
other estates, including the conventional media. Ogola (2019) mentions that
Robert Alai’s signicant online followers means that most of the issues he
tweets about are quickly scaled up and picked up by mass media, which gives
him the kind of exposure and credibility that very often provoke some sort
of realistic action.
As of June 2021, Robert Alai had 1.6 million followers, with 261,000 tweets
since 2008. Typically, his tweets generate hundreds of likes, retweets, and
comments depending on the issue tweeted. Figure 9.2 presents Crowdtangle
data on engagement on four popular Kenyan bloggers’ Facebook sites
(Robert Alai, Abraham Mutai, Boniface Mwangi, and Cyprian Nyakundi)
since January–June 10, 2021. The interactions shown include the number
of reactions, comments, and shares from their followers. Crowdtangle is a
Facebook-owned and maintained public insight tool that allows researchers
to study data from Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit. From the data, Robert
Alai’s Facebook posts generated a total of 4.46 million interactions over a
period of ve months. Alai’s online prole (on both Facebook and Twitter)
provided him with social capital that not only served him well, but also
allowed him to inuence online discourse.
Dugmore and Ligaga (2014) note that Twitter and Facebook have become
sites where bloggers and other individuals have been questioning informa-
tion provided by the conventional media. According to The Standard (2013),
Robert Alai was quoted, in an email interview, as saying that he was very
much interested in social justice issues and that it pained him to see some-
one suering because of something which could be prevented and that he
was interested in everyone getting his/her fair of justice. In 2012, Robert
Alai was arrested after he accused the then government spokesperson Alfred
Mutua of being involved in the murder of two human rights activists Kamau
Kingara and Paul Oulu in Nairobi. Kingara and Oulu were doing some
investigations at the time of their deaths in connection with the widespread
torture and assassination by the Kenyan police of alleged Mungiki sect mem-
bers (an illegal group in Kenya). Robert Alai’s tweets on the murders were
more detailed and inuential than the short stories that appeared in Kenyan
newspapers. The tweets presented the story with depth and allowed much
more interaction with the potential truths about the murder.

Digital Dissidents or Whistle-Blowers? 185
At the onset of COVID-19 pandemic in Kenya in March 2020, Robert Alai
was arrested again and criminally charged for publishing of what authorities
termed “alarming and false information” about increased cases of COVID-19
in that month, contrary to government reports. On March 13, 2020, Robert
Alai conrmed being tortured by government forces after being arrested.
According to a Daily Nation article, Robert Alai also suggested that he would
not again speak up for the interests of Kenyans marginalised by the regime,
but in August 3, 2020, he called on his followers to send exposés with evi-
dence and he would send to the Director of Criminal Investigations (DCI)
and Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) to show that the
real criminals are not bloggers but well-known individuals in government
(Figure 9.3).
In 2013, during the Westgate Mall attack in Nairobi, the media cover-
age of the events was muddled with a mixture of government controls,
self-censorship by the media and threats from the military and the state.
Robert Alai was commended internationally for his informative tweets on
Figure 9.2 Volume of interaction on Facebook pages of four prolic bloggers in Kenya
(Robert Alai, Boniface Mwangi, Cyprian Nyakundi, and Abraham Mutai)
collected from Crowdtangle.

186 Job Mwaura
the Westgate attack (The Standard, 2013). In the early morning of September
23, 2013, when an explosion shook the Westlands district of Nairobi (where
the Westgate Mall is located), the claim that the attack was nearly over was
invalidated by Robert Alai. In the early afternoon, a bigger blast followed.
The siege was not going to be done for another day. Because of the media
gagging by the state, Robert Alai lled in this gap and provided the much-
needed information to his followers and to those following the events of the
attack. The Standard (2013) reported that Robert Alai had realised that the
government was trying to contain and manage news ow without oer-
ing credible information about the attack and so he decided to defy police
and government warning on anybody reporting what the police had not
conrmed.
On many other occasions, Robert Alai has been at the forefront of iden-
tifying and calling out injustices in the society from police brutality, gender
violence, to social and cultural injustices in marginalised populations, and
corruption by politicians.
Robert Alai as a blogger has constructed himself as a “truth teller” in an
era of increased government controls and media self-censorship, fake news,
and misinformation, where the “truth” has become not just a contested term
but a subjective category depending on people’s political or philosophical
inclinations. Robert Alai also calls himself a present-day freedom ghter, just
like the Mau Mau warriors who fought for the end of colonialism. He has
mentioned that the same way freedom ghters died to gain freedom for their
fellow Kenyans, he does not fear getting in trouble for what he believes in.
Figure 9.3 A screenshot from Robert Alai’s Facebook Page.

Digital Dissidents or Whistle-Blowers? 187
He also presents himself as the voice of the people or the people’s ombuds-
man since he believes he speaks for Kenyan citizens. Robert Alai has also
admitted that he crowdsources information from individuals in government,
politicians, journalists, and ordinary citizens. This makes him present him-
self as someone with insider knowledge of the workings of the government.
It is the way he has constructed himself and what he posts on social media
that has made him rub shoulders with government forces. The government
feels that his blogging works disrupt or threaten the existing power of the
state, and the state in turn censors him through arrests, sentencing, and unre-
lenting court cases. Ironically, though, Robert Alai was awarded a Head of
State Commendation (HSC) award in 2017. This generated a huge reaction
on social media and (Boniface Mwangi) wrote the following in part, on his
Facebook page after Robert Alai was detained for several days in June 2019
(Figure 9.4).
Cyprian Nyakundi
Cyprian Nyakundi is a popular Kenyan blogger and activist. His Facebook
page mentions that his interest is in politics, corporate fraud, and human-
interest stories. He is linked to the ownership of several blog pages such as
Cnyakundi, Kenyan bulletin, Kenya Live Feed, and Uhondo News. He shot
into fame while he was a student at Meru University in Kenya. On several
occasions, he used his social media to highlight the problems he and other
students were facing. The university suspended him and later expelled him,
saying that he had used social media to tarnish the image of the university.
When he highlighted his case with the university on social media and posted
his suspension letter on Twitter, the hashtag #JusticeForCyprianNyakundi
trended for a few days. In an interview with a local media station, he was
quoted as saying:
I always like speaking out whenever there is a problem in society, and
this has not gone down very well especially with the authority of Meru
University. I like using social media and whenever there is a problem, I
usually raise it and hear people’s views. Sincerely speaking social media is
a great avenue for raising issues and even getting solutions to our dynam-
ically changing society.
(Capital Campus, 2014)
His speaking out and subsequent expulsion from the university was the
beginning of his activism and subsequent landing in trouble with the gov-
ernment, corporate organisations, and individuals. Just like Robert Alai, he
has been arrested, detained, and charged in courts on many occasions, mainly
for defamation, spreading hate speech or what the government calls “com-
puter misuse and cybercrime”. He has also had his accounts on Twitter and
Facebook accounts closed by the platforms on several occasions. However,

188 Job Mwaura
Figure 9.4 Some parts of the Post written by Boniface Mwangi on his Facebook page
about Robert Alai on June 28, 2019.

Digital Dissidents or Whistle-Blowers? 189
with his huge following on these platforms (currently 90,000 on Twitter and
112,000 on Facebook), he has always returned with dierent usernames. On
his blog, he laments that some powerful “behemoths” are silencing his voice
and are about to make him disappear forever. He asks for support from his
audience by subscribing to updates from his blog (Fig ure 9.5).
In 2016, Cyprian Nyakundi was sued by Safaricom PLC, the largest tel-
ecom company in Kenya, for defaming the company on social media. The
Figure 9.5 A screenshot of Cyprian Nyakundi’s landing page on his blog.

190 Job Mwaura
company claimed that the posts written by Cyprian Nyakundi were base-
less and unsubstantiated. Cyprian Nyakundi had started a 15-part series that
exposed how the company, through its former CEO Bob Collymore and
Michael Joseph, defrauded its customers together with third parties, how the
company invaded the privacy and security of its customers and how the com-
pany laid o its employees who fell sick. The series was cut short through a
court order (Kenya Law Report, 2017; Civil Case 159 of 2016).
In another case, Cyprian Nyakundi was sued by a manufacturing com-
pany, BIDCO Africa,4 the CEO of the company, and other business part-
ners for defamation. Cyprian Nyakundi had alleged that the company had
oppressed their factory workers in Uganda and Kenya in a series of posts
on his blog and Twitter account. The posts were accompanied by hashtags
#BIDCOAreLandGrabbers, #StopFundingBIDCO, #LettertoVimal, and
BIDCOExposed. In the same case, it was alleged by the company’s commu-
nication manager that in a recorded audio, Cyprian Nyakundi asked for Kshs
50M (about USD 500,000) to pull down the posts on social media.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Cyprian Nyakundi was detained by
Kenyan police forces for claiming on Twitter that a senior ocial from the
Kenyan Revenue Authority had travelled out of the country and did not
self-quarantine after returning. When word went around that police were
looking for him, he posted the following tweet:
I have received reports that KRA CG5 has paid some detectives to arrest
me because I posted that he ew out and never quarantined for 14 days.
No need to look for me @DCI_Kenya6. Just summon me and I’ll come.
We are aware of the crackdown on bloggers,
He was charged for having contravened section 23 of the Computer Misuse
and Cybercrimes Act, and he was released on a cash bail of Kshs 150,000
(about USD 1,500).
Despite these charges on Cyprian Nyakundi and many others still pending
in court, he won a case where he was contesting the interpretation of section
84(d)7 of the KICA, 2009 which criminalised the publishing of obscene/
derogatory information on social media. He had contested this section of
the law after being sued by two politicians, Ann Waiguru and Mike Sonko,
for using impolite language to criticise them. According to the ruling of the
case 214 of 2018, the judge made the following observations as summarised
below in six points:
• Kenya is a democratic country with democratically elected leaders, thus
residents must understand that it is only through criticism that citizens
may inform their leaders when their actions are not in the best interests
of the country.
• It is important for public ocers to tolerate all manner of criticism in
an open and democratic state

Digital Dissidents or Whistle-Blowers? 191
• That a law, especially one that creates a criminal oence, should be
clear and unambiguous.
• That dissent in opinion or thought should not amount to a crime oth-
erwise this is in eect, suppressing the right to hold dierent opinion
from those in public oce.
• That the mere use of impolite language, which was really the case in
the petition, should not necessarily be criminalized.
• That section 84D of KICA is too retrogressive to t into the mod-
ern, open, and democratic society envisaged under the current
Constitution.
(Excerpt from Kenya Law Report, 2019; Case 214 of 2018)
This case shows how activities of the bloggers can lead to dierent outcomes.
First, the case exposes the vagueness and inadequacies of the laws created to
censor online activities. Secondly, the contestation of these rogue laws and
the ruling made sets precedent that individuals would no longer be convicted
based on such laws. Thirdly, it also means that the public has the right to
criticise the activities of the public ocers without victimisation. In general,
such contestations have the potential to bring a desired change pushed by the
activities of the online constituents.
Conclusion
Many bloggers and social media personalities have used the platforms to cre-
ate constituencies which have not only become audience but also actively
involved in co-creation of content and source of valuable information for
the bloggers and microbloggers. This freedom of expression has however
been greatly hindered by legal action taken against bloggers by the state in
an attempt to censor them and their online activities. While the state con-
siders them as a threat to peaceful coexistence of Kenyans, the bloggers take
advantage of the vagueness of the existing laws. Nyabola (2018) notes that
The Cyber Crimes Act 2018, for instance, has focused on the threat blog-
gers pose to politicians rather than the obligation to protect the privacy of
Kenyans online.
However, it is important to question why bloggers are facing so many chal-
lenges so often with the law enforcers. In the rst instance, the government
strives to keep its operations away from the public scrutiny – either to save
face or hide the corrupt deals it engages in on a regular basis. Therefore, any-
one with information on the under deals is considered a dissident. Secondly,
the bloggers seem to step in and ll in the gaps left by conventional media
that is so compromised by the state. Essentially, the media, as the fourth
estate, is meant to be an eye for the public. Yet, in Kenya, just like many other
places around the world, the media does not act for the masses. It acts for the
elite in the society. In addition, journalists who seek to expose the wrong-
doings of the government in many parts of the world face consequences that

192 Job Mwaura
the CPJ sadly describes as “the new normal”, characterised by intimidation,
arrests, imprisonment, being “disappeared”, or even being killed.
Therefore, the media is careful to engage in overt criticism of the gov-
ernment. According to a report by Freedom House, Kenya’s press is ranked
as partly free, which means the media is signicantly constricted not just
through self-censorship, but also as a consequence of the general increase
in threats to the press (Freedom House, 2014). Therefore, we can conclude
that the ineptitude of the government, inadequacies of the conventional
media, and the thriving of digital media spaces in Kenya have all conspired
to allow for the thriving of political inuencers and cyber-activists such as
Robert Alai and Cyprian Nyakundi.
The online activities of Robert Alai and those of Cyprian Nyakundi are sim-
ilar in many ways, but according to the online persona they have created over
the years, their greatest motivation is a desire for sociopolitical change. They are
political activists and proponents of reforms known for criticising the regressive
regimes and at the same time, they have dealt with attempts to suppress, silence,
or dissuade from continuing their cyber-activism. Recuero (2008) in a study on
information ows and social capital in weblogs in Brazil found out that bloggers
were motivated to post content to (a) create a personal space, (b) share interac-
tions, (c) share knowledge, (d) authority and (e) popularity. Since bloggers rec-
ognise that the content, they publish inside their network, has dierent values,
they choose to publish information based on the principles that inspire them.
However, on the topic of sociopolitical change, while many scholars argue that
it is only possible to succeed with a mix of oine activities to drive sociopolitical
change online, Cyprian Nyakundi and Robert Alai’s blogging activities linked
to sociopolitical change should be seen as part of the larger aim of pushing for
change rather than an isolated and futile practice.
This study sought to unravel the dierent approaches of online activism used
by bloggers (Robert Alai and Cyprian Nyakundi) at the same time unravel
the diverse ways the state uses to imposes censorship on online constituents.
These bloggers are aware of the government’s loathing of their activities and,
despite the relentless silencing through countless court proceedings, arrests,
and imprisonment, they are aware at the same time that they have a massive
social media audience that provides them with social capital that can still some-
how sustain them. Although the government is actively trying to censor them
by implementing and re-introducing restrictive laws while still using sophis-
ticated online surveillance tools, the degree to which Robert Alai or Cyprian
Nyakundi will aect real political results in the near future will undoubtedly
be aected in part by the communicative activities we see now.
Notes
1 “How do we unpack the phrase “popular energy”? Popular energy is the zeitgeist – the
energy that denes a society at a particular moment. Popular energy is the things
that dominate conversations, shape action, or direct attention and eorts. Popular

Digital Dissidents or Whistle-Blowers? 193
energy is the forces that set the tone for social or political action by members of a
community at any moment. Popular energy consists of the social and political issues
that motivate action in the private and the public realm. Popular energy is the pulse
of a society at any given moment.” Excerpt From: Nyabola (2018).
2 Kahawa Tungu is Swahili for coee pot.
3 Techmtaa – Tech (Technology) mtaa (neighborhood) is a colloquial term that
means “technology in the neighborhood”.
4 Bidco Africa, previously Bidco Oil Reneries Limited, is a multinational con-
sumer goods company headquartered in Thika, Kenya, with subsidiaries and dis-
tributorships across 16 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Its products include Edible
Oils, fats, margarine, laundry bars and detergents, personal care products, and ani-
mal feeds. Bidco Africa owns over 40 brands and is the largest producer, marketer,
and retailer of consumer goods in the region.
5 Kenya Revenue Authority Commissioner General.
6 @DCI_Kenya – Twitter handle of Department of Criminal Investigation in
Kenya.
7 KICA 84D states that “Publishing of obscene information in electronic form”.
Any person who publishes or transmits or causes to be published in electronic
form, any material which is lascivious or appeals to the prurient interest and its
eect is such as to tend to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely, having
regard to all relevant circumstances, to read, see or hear the matter contained or
embodied therein, shall on conviction be liable to a ne not exceeding 200,000
shillings or imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years or both.
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