[kictanet] Self censorship and the need for a village mad man

[robert yawe]

Hi all and the rest,

I came across the following article and noted that the writer was likely not a member of this forum otherwise he would have realised that the problem transcends economic and social class;

There’s little content from low income earning communities in Kenya on 
the Internet due to self censorship, rather than due to lack of access 
to connectivity. 


This has been revealed by Chris Orwa, who works with 
iHub Research On a piece on the iHub blog, Orwa says that the iHub, in following up on incidents reported on Ushahidi’s 
Uchaguzi election monitoring tool, found that much more happened in 
Mathare slums than was reported online. 


In addition, the team had 
observed that most of the reports on the platform were made from middle 
income neighbourhoods in Nairobi.

In a visit to Mathare, Orwa and 
his team were told that the community there was tight knit - with people tending to know each other. There were a few people with access to the 
Internet, who also knew each other. The community tends to shun those 
who post negative information about the community, with indication that 
the community may in addition clamp down on those posting such 
information.

Additionally, those who came from such areas did not 
want to be associated with the neighbourhood. This resulted in little 
information about such neighbourhoods being posted online. In addition, 
if any info was posted, it was rarely negative.

Please only respond if you disagree with my interpretation

 
Regards


Robert Yawe
KAY System Technologies Ltd
Phoenix House, 6th Floor
P O Box 55806 Nairobi, 00200
Kenya


Tel: +254722511225, +254202010696
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