“Virtual Expressions”: Alternative Online Spaces and the Staging of Kenyan Popular Cultures

Abstract

There is a growing body of work on popular culture in Africa that has focused on the eclectic production of culture on the continent. However, very little attention has been paid to the rising significance of the Internet as a site of production for these popular cultures. Existing scholarship on Internet usage and production on the continent has tended to focus on issues of lack, whether it is about access, literacy, or usage, which though important, has muted the much more vibrant set of activities by Africans online. In this article, I argue that by locating the Internet as an alternative site of production for popular culture, it becomes possible to begin to explore the myriad meanings of online activities that reference the social and political lives of their users. It is in such a venture that one can begin to explore the impact and significance of the Internet in transforming how we read popular culture in Africa. I explore the meanings of selected Internet texts circulated in the “Kenyan blogosphere,” arguing that the Internet provides alternative routes of expression of popular culture, bringing to the fore aspects of social and political lives and ideas that would otherwise have remained hidden from public discourse.