Elections Observation Group (ELOG) is a long-term and permanent citizen platform comprising 18 Civil Society and Faith-Based Organizations with a mandate to strengthen democracy in Kenya and the African region through monitoring and observation of electoral processes. ELOG employs an electoral cycle approach, which entails observation in the pre-election, during the election and the post-election environment. The approach informs wholesome observation and reporting of thematic and topical issues, tracking recommendations and providing updated and relevant information to the Kenyan citizens.
ELOG conducted a post-election media monitoring project, which targeted 25 media outlets between October 2022 and June 2023. The media monitoring focused on the coverage of ELOG’s key thematic areas of electoral reforms, political party/coalition activities, participation of Special Interest Groups in electoral issues, activities by the Election Management Body, election petitions, and electoral/political violence. The monitors submitted a total of 5,020 quantitative reports on the coverage of thematic areas and a total of 483 incidences of misinformation, disinformation, and hate speech related to the thematic areas.
A trend analysis was conducted using the media monitoring reports to identify patterns of misinformation, disinformation, hate speech, activities that led to the occurrences, perpetrators, victims and occurrences per media platform. Among the key observable trends was the following: 100% of the incidences of misinformation/disinformation and hate speech were reported from online platforms. Twitter was the leading purveyor at 42%, followed by Facebook at 32%, TikTok at 18% and Websites and Blogs at 8%.
The trend analysis looks at the different aspects of the reports, draws conclusions and predictions for future behaviour and concludes by giving recommendations on what state and non-state actors can do to address the issues raised.