Challenging Traditional Media Hegemonic Practices

Abstract

The top-bottom model espoused by the traditional media structures is being problematized by the emerging technological change in the 21st century. Kenya presents an example of bottom-top model, which is a challenge to the hegemonic potential of top-down model. In the discussion that follows, we will establish how media in Kenya have been operating within a top-bottom model until recently. This top-bottom model has been problematized by the emergence of the new communication technologies (NCTs), which have allowed individuals to challenge dominant voices and myths, alter representation and meaning of symbols and vocabulary, and re-define politico-social structures around which the luminal rituals of the national have been interwoven for the sole purpose of fostering group cohesion. We argue in this discussion that the proliferation of NCTs and communication strategies have dismembered the nation by stimulating exponential multiplication of discursive regimes that may have been impossible previously when media technologies were confined to the control of a central, and oftentimes restrictive authority. It is against this background that we seek to probe the extent to which media technologies are ineffaceably co-opted into designs of the dominant ideology and various other hegemonic structures.