A Research on The Attitudes on Kenyans Toward Social Media

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1.0 BACKGROUND. This research study explores the attitudes of Kenyan proletariat voters towards social media political activism and to what extent such strategies can be said to be Communitarian expressions of political association or ethnic mobilization devoid of issue-based politics. Communitarianism is a philosophy emphasizing the connection between an individual and the community. A “community” in this context is understood in the wider sense of interactions between communities of people in a geographical location, or who have a shared history or interest. Does such targeted online campaigns prove group Structuration Theory-a concept where human agency and social structure are in a relationship with each other, and it is the repetition of the acts of individual agents which reproduces the social structure-traditions, institutions, moral codes, and established norms and practices; though these can be reversed or changed when people start to ignore them, replace them, or reproduce them differently . 2.0 AIMS AND OBJECTIVE Social media activism is a rampant phenomenon in political mobilization among Kenya’s pretentiously progressive middle-class voters. The practice itself is relatively new, but it has grown tremendously, particularly in the developing world where campaign strategists have leveraged social relations within group members to consolidate party loyalty and cultivate support from interest groups. This study is based on face –to- face interviews and questionnaires responded to by a segment of middle-class Kenyan voters with a view to assess their attitudes towards communal and political affiliation and to what extent adaptive Structuration group theory promotes diversity or entrenches negative ethnicity. 3.0 INTRODU... ... middle of paper ... ...y confirms the prevalence of adaptive Structuration theory in expressing political choices among Kenya’s social media groups which affirm that to an extent the urban youth feel attached to and bound to identify with certain Communitarian sympathies akin to their ethnic affiliation. It is a democratic gain that the more technologically savvy among the voting youth are utilizing the digital space to maximize political messaging. However, the danger lies in the increasingly ethnic tendencies of emerging social media. The growing minority of digitally engaged citizens ought to influence the bottom line towards a more inclusive and tolerant politics. Key institutions such as the National Cohesion and Integration Commission and the Communications Commission of Kenya must device new regulatory systems to ameliorate the negative impact of negative ethnicity on social media.

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