Digital media and citizen journalism in environmental reporting in Baringo County-Kenya, 2010–2015

Abstract

This article analyzes the history of digital media and citizen journalism in environmental reporting in Baringo County, Kenya from 2010 to 2015. The study suggests that mobile communication technologies and the advent of social media have revolutionized the way that environmental information is communicated in semi-arid communities that have been historically excluded from the dominant media system. The article argues that, through interpretative analysis, oral interviews and focus group discussions, together with archival research, local communities were able to document ecological crises like drought, deforestation, water scarcity, and geothermal expansion via digital communication. The results show that citizen journalism first became visible as a way of mobilizing a community around information about its environment, advocacy and shaping the local media agenda—essentially as a survivalist strategy. This transformation was, however, not as inclusive as it could be with infrastructural inequalities, weak internet access, digital illiteracy, and misinformation. It is concluded that digital media reconfigured communicative power relations in Baringo in the sense that it allowed marginalized populations to become active in the environmental discourse and politically engaged, thus providing a basis for post-2015 environmental activism in Kenya's semi-arid areas.