Diffusion
The violence that attended Kenya’s 2007 elections shocked the nation’s media as well as the larger society. According to African experts interviewed in this fifth episode of Peacebuilders, Kenyan media has become both more responsible as a result and more oriented toward reaching ethnic-group audiences rather than national ones. Whether this will lead to an increase or decrease in the importance of ethnicity for Kenyan politics remains to be seen.
Posting weekly on Tuesday mornings, Peacebuilders features nine episodes from East Africa on everything from the future of the African Union to immigration to media and elections in Kenya. The interviewers are Aaron Stanley, a program assistant with Carnegie Corporation of New York’s international security program, and Scott Malcomson, an author, journalist, and former government official and NGO executive. Malcomson was a Carnegie Corporation media fellow in 2015-18, and is currently a fellow in international security at the New American Foundation and director of special projects at Strategic Insight Group.
(Photo credit: ILRI/Susan MacMillan)
