Digital Media Literacy and Youth Civic Reasoning in Kenya | Baseline Report

Digital/media literacy has progressively become the docket for mobile operators, government, Non-governmental Organizations, and international organizations. In particular, East Africa has become a Digital Innovation Centre for some years now, especially in Kenya. Digital/media literacy can be described as the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that empower citizens to access, use, create, retrieve and understand information and media. Since digital/ media literacy can alter how people discern the media industry and appraise media messages, it could also lower the possible negative impact that the media can have on youth's political participation and voting behavior. 

Indeed, the online environment is now pivotal to political life, particularly for the youth. There are various prominent contexts for pursuits: sharing political perspectives, fundraising, mobilizing people, political debates, and exerting pressure on governments. Most of these activities happen within broader media ecology bounds that can be distinguished as a participatory culture. This research shows that there is enough evidence of a strong awareness among Kenya's youth regarding adverse communication types, including cyberbullying, hate speech, and disinformation though verification measures of such information are not robust.

The Youth Café seeks to equip young people with critical media literacy skills: critical thinking, fact-checking, online safety, social media verification, and quality assessment of online information and their sources through a dedicated handbook. Now more than ever, we need to enhance the fact-checking skills of the youth to restore eroded trust by fake news, improve their civic online reasoning and encourage responsible social media usage. These skills are critical in the electoral context in a bid to reduce political incitement, political strife, and tarnished political images and hate speech. These skills are essential in restoring and consolidating democracy in Kenya.

Evidence shows that digital tools and social media networks have been used to spread distorted narratives to shape public opinions. Through designing, developing, evaluating, and disseminating a Youth-Centered Digital Media Literacy Handbook, we hope to address digital threats to democracy in Kenya. In 2021, we’re zooming in on the relationship between media and election participation among young people, showing its importance, and exploring the principles and role of media and information literacy in meaningful youth civic engagement. As a result, through this partnership, we will undertake collaborative inquiry with a wide range of youth-led organizational partners, utilize peer-to-peer networks, catalyze conversations and encourage the inclusion of diverse youth voices in discussions about digital misinformation in the 2022 Kenyan elections.

This report encapsulates The Process (Scanning the Literature, Analyzing the literature, Survey, Focus Group Discussions and Key Informant Interviews), Findings of the Literature Review (Current Socio-cultural context on civic engagement, Current National Digital Literacy Policy, Current evidence of targeted misinformation, Current access and use of digital technologies, Current interventions in teaching media literacy skills, Current availability of fact-checking, social media verification, and quality assessment of information, Current issues on digital safety, and Current Policies in Youth democratic engagement), Findings from the Focus Group Discussions and Key Informant Interviews, Conclusions and finally Recommendations.

Data collection was dependent on secondary data sources. A desk review was conducted through an in depth review of online documentary sources availed by other organizations and researchers. We also supplemented the secondary data with a needs assessment survey and a focus group discussion. Unfortunately, there have been relatively few studies (whether in or out of school) that have examined the degree to which efforts to develop young people’s digital engagement literacies ultimately foster later civic and political engagement. More research in this area of work is needed but the information garnered provides sufficient preliminary data and gives a trajectory for future research.

Do you want to know more? Read Key Informant Interview Report and Focus Group Discussion

Do you have any questions or comments? Contact us or give us some feedback.