Media and Policymaking in Kenya: Framing in Contested Public Spaces

Abstract

This chapter discusses the role that the media play in framing issues that are being considered for public policy. In doing so, it introduces the theory of communicative action, originally developed by the German theorist, Jurgen Habermas, to demonstrate what a participatory approach to governance would entail. Using the case of the debates that preceded the 2018 Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Bill, it examines the challenges that Kenyan media actors face in participating to enlarge the public sphere. It highlights the increased tensions between the government and its citizens that have arisen with the spread in the use of social media that are more taxing to monitor. The chapter ends with a discussion of how far Habermas and his theory help to understand the role of communicative action in countries like Kenya, the conclusion being that it is important to take note of the differences in context between Habermas’s bourgeois Germany in the middle of the last century and the pre-capitalist values that continue to prevail in African countries in the early twenty-first century.