[kictanet] Digitally Networked Technology in Kenya's 2007-2008 Post-Election Crisis

[alice]

<http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/publications/2008/Digitally_Networked_Technology_Kenyas_Post-Election_Crisis>


Digitally Networked Technology in Kenya's 2007-2008 Post-Election Crisis

Abstract

Written largely through the lens of rich nations, scholars have 
developed theories about how digital technology affects democracy. 
However, largely due to a paucity of evidence, these theories have 
excluded the experience of Sub-Saharan Africa, where meaningful 
access to digital tools is only beginning to emerge, but where the 
struggles between failed state and functioning democracy are 
profound. Using the lens of the 2007-2008 Kenyan Presidential 
Election Crisis, this case study illustrates how digitally networked 
technologies, specifically mobile phones and the Internet, were a 
catalyst to both predatory behavior such as ethnic-based mob violence 
and to civic behaviors such as citizen journalism and human rights 
campaigns. The paper concludes with the notion that while digital 
tools can help promote transparency and keep perpetrators from facing 
impunity, they can also increase the ease of promoting hate speech 
and ethnic divisions.