Poging GOUD - Vrij
If it cared, TikTok could inform not inflame Kenya's political debate Odanga Madung
The Guardian Weekly
|July 08, 2022
Over the past year, I have submerged myself in propaganda, trying to study the information nerve-endings of Kenyan politics.
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What I have uncovered is how the production of disinformation became a cottage industry in Kenya, how disinformation can be used as a tool to consolidate power, and how European far-right groups have tried to manipulate Kenyan platforms.
As I waded through all this content, I would always find several TikTok videos being distributed across platforms. So I decided to focus on TikTok to try to get a sense of the world where these videos were originating.
TikTok likes to position itself as a dancing and lip-syncing app, but my investigation unearthed a lot more than that. There were brazen calls for ethnic hatred and violence. One video contained a clip of a political candidate giving a speech at a rally with a caption saying that he hates "Kikuyus [an ethnic tribe in Kenya] and will be seeking revenge in 2022." Another took on the form of a detergent infomercial, saying that "UDA [a Kenyan political party] can be used to remove madoadoa ["stains"] such as Kikuyus, Luhyas, Luos and even Kambas." (All these are tribes in Kenya.) I also encountered phoney content: slickly produced videos containing fake assertions, styled as if they're from authentic Netflix documentaries, local TV stations or even US president Joe Biden's Twitter account.
Dit verhaal komt uit de July 08, 2022-editie van The Guardian Weekly.
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