Nanjala Nyabola
Political Analyst, Writer, and Humanitarian Advocate, KE
Keynote speaker at #DNL13 HATE NEWS · Manipulators, Trolls & Influencers
Nanjala Nyabola is a writer and political analyst based in Nairobi, Kenya. Her research focuses on politics and society in East Africa, as well as conflict and migration. She has published extensively in international outlets like Al Jazeera, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, the Nation and others and is the author of Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics: How the Internet is Transforming Kenya (Zed Books, 2018).
BETWEEN HATE AND HOPE: Lessons from Kenya on Hate Speech and Political Manipulation on the Internet
Nanjala Nyabola (Kenyan Political Analyst, Writer, and Humanitarian Advocate, KE).
Moderated by Jo Havemann (r0g_agency for Open Culture and Critical Transformation, DE)
Misogyny, racism, xenophobia, and homophobia – these ideas in themselves are not new but increased connectivity makes them easier to package and to transmit. In this historical moment, it is easy to focus on events in the West where most of the world's Internet users live, but Nanjala Nyabola’s presentation will force us to look to other parts of the world where the story is more complicated. With one of the highest rates of Internet penetration in the developing world and particularly a rapidly growing social media presence, Kenya is the perfect place to examine our assumptions about how the Internet intersects with politics, and particularly hate speech. What was it about Kenya's digital space that made it so attractive to the same companies that worked on major political campaigns in the West? Did the Internet really contribute to more hate speech in Kenya? Did it affect politics? How should the different actors - the government, internet companies and individuals - respond? This isn't a presentation about technology, but about what happens when technology and human agency collide in a volatile context.
