negotiating the balance between speed and ...

African Journalism Studies

ISSN: 2374-3670 (Print) 2374-3689 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/recq21

Negotiating the Balance between Speed and Credibility in Deploying Twitter as Journalistic Tool at the Daily Nation Newspaper in Kenya Benjamin Muindi To cite this article: Benjamin Muindi (2018) Negotiating the Balance between Speed and Credibility in Deploying Twitter as Journalistic Tool at the Daily Nation Newspaper in Kenya, African Journalism Studies, 39:1, 111-128 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/23743670.2018.1445654

Published online: 23 May 2018.

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ARTICLE

NEGOTIATING THE BALANCE BETWEEN SPEED AND CREDIBILITY IN DEPLOYING TWITTER AS JOURNALISTIC TOOL AT THE DAILY NATION NEWSPAPER IN KENYA Benjamin Muindi

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8538-0222 Daystar University, Kenya [email protected]

ABSTRACT Technology has significantly altered the practice of journalism at a number of levels, including broadening news sourcing and creating parallel markets of information for journalists, away from their traditional channels of content distribution. Equally, the buffer between professional journalists and their audiences has blurred. Contemporary journalists embrace new routines by deploying new technologies in their practice, and the multifarious responses by their media houses to these changes are emerging globally. This paper focuses on the deployment of Twitter by Kenyan journalists at the Daily Nation in their everyday practices of sourcing, production and dissemination of news. Data is obtained through semi-structured interviews with reporters attached to the news desk, and examined through the diffusion of innovations framework. The study found that by adopting Twitter in their daily routines— and because of the fast-paced nature of micro-blogging—the journalists have increased the speed of sharing news in order to stay relevant on the news market. The research also presents an overview of how the journalists negotiate the professional demands of clarity, balance and truth while at the same time embracing the immediacy and spontaneity of Twitter. The study recommends a need for mainstream media in Kenya to expand its news agenda by developing innovative ways of establishing the credibility of emerging news sources on Twitter.

Keywords: diffusion of innovations; diffusion of Internet in Kenya; new media in Kenya; social media; Twitter

African Journalism Studies www.tandfonline.com/recq20 Volume 39 | Number 1 | 2018 | pp. 111-128

https://doi.org/10.1080/23743670.2017.1445654 ISSN 2374-3689 (Online), ISSN 2374-3670 (Print) © Unisa Press 2018

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Negotiating the Balance between Speed and Credibility

INTRODUCTION Predictions of a technology-driven society by McLuhan and Fiore (1967) have been fulfilled today as growth in Internet penetration is significantly changing how the media across the globe do business. In the Kenyan news media, as in the rest of Africa, new media technology has been domesticated to varying degrees, and is increasingly becoming one of the drivers of everyday newsmaking routines. The Communications Authority (CA) of Kenya (2017) reports that there are 37.7 million Internet users in the country—a penetration rate of 85 per cent basing computation on a population of 44.2 million (KNBS 2017). This is attributed to the rising number of Kenyans who have Internet-enabled phones at their disposal. The State of the Internet Report in Kenya (BAKE 2016) indicates that there are 6.1 million Kenyans using Facebook and 2.2 million on Twitter; 3 million use Instagram, 1.5 million others use LinkedIn and 350,000 are on Google+. WhatsApp is estimated to have 10 million users. The report notes that the use of Twitter on mobiles is more popular than on desktop computers. As a result of the foregoing, social media platforms have become alternative sources of news for Kenyans. As BAKE observes, “Blogs are seen by many as authentic means to get news and opinions that mainstream media would normally shy away from. This could be described as anti-traditional media sentiment and blogs are increasingly filling up the gap” (2016, 4). In the light of the above developments, this study uses the diffusion of innovations theory to explore how journalists at the Daily Nation, one of East Africa’s leading newspapers, use Twitter in their day-to-day practice at the newsroom. As a new innovation, the use of Twitter by journalists has been studied in different parts of the world such as Australia (Bruns 2102), England (Vis 2013), Spain (Alvarez 2012), and the United States (Schultz and Sheffer 2010), but there is a paucity of empirical research conducted on the subject in Africa, and Kenya in particular. The study thus focuses on how the Internet is reshaping journalism routines in Kenya, and augments the body of literature exploring the deployment of social media by journalists across the world. It further contributes to the diffusion of innovations theory by providing nuances of its application in an African, Kenyan context, in particular. The remaining part of this introduction shifts attention to the development of Twitter, and its adoption and application in newsroom contexts by journalists across the world is explored. Twitter was started on March 21, 2006 by Jack Dorsey as a microblogging website that initially allowed users to send short bursts of information in under 140 characters. In 2017, the company launched a new feature enabling the posting of information under 280 characters by selected users. On its website (www.twitter.com), the social media platform states that its mission “is to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers” and describes itself as “a real-time information network that connects you to the latest information about what you find interesting.” Data available on its official site shows that half a billion tweets are sent per day on the platform (or one billion tweets in two days) and that 76 per cent of 112

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its active users are on mobile phones; 77 per cent of its accounts are outside the United States where it was founded and its services are available in 35 different languages. Tracing the history of Twitter, Van Dijck (2013, 70–8) observes that: When Twitter first arrived on the scene, nobody really knew how to define it. Touted as the SMS of the internet, the technology allowing users to send and receive text messages of up to 140 characters1 known as tweets was characterized as something between a short message service, a phone call, an e-mail and a blog; less cumbersome than keeping a blog, less exclusive than talking to one person on a phone, less formal than an e-mail exchange and less elaborate than most social network sites.

Twitter users subscribe to tweets from others by an act of following users they are interested in. The platform enables users to engage in a communal dialogue— commenting, replying and or retweeting tweets from the users that they are interested in. This was the primary means of engagement on Twitter until 2008 when the platform introduced the concept of trending topics where users would group posts together containing similar messages by starting with a hashtag sign (#) (Van Dijck 2013). Bruns and Burgess (2012) note that hashtags make certain tweets more prominent as well as create a new user relationship with other users that one is not following. The retweet functionality that allows users to repost a tweet by using the letters RT from their followers was launched in 2009. The feature encourages “conversational tagging” (Boyd et al. 2010, 1). It has been described as “the equivalent of e-mail forwarding” and “it brings new people into a particular thread inviting them to engage without directly addressing them” (Boyd et al. 2010, 1). Van Dijck (2013) notes that Twitter has been gradually launching new geospatial features where users from a particular region can share messages concerning their area or the messages can also be searched by entering the area name in the search button. As seen above, Twitter, like most social media platforms, has continuously evolved by generating newer features that offer users fresh interactive experiences by exploiting its interconnected nature. As observed earlier, the use of Twitter by journalists has been studied in many parts of the world. In Australia, for example, Bruns (2012) found that journalists and their organisations have incorporated Twitter into their work processes, both at personal and organisational levels. The participation of audiences in the processes of gathering and disseminating news was highlighted as a key finding. Journalism in this context has been described as participatory (Singer et al. 2011). In Europe, Vis (2013) has investigated how UK journalists use Twitter as a tool for breaking news, especially around key national events. Vis studied how the 2011 summer riots in England were reported by mainstream journalists using Twitter as a place to break news of the four-day protests, share links and images. In Spain, Alvarez (2012), in an in-depth survey, found that journalists were among the most active Twitter users 1

As noted earlier, in 2017, Twitter launched a new feature enabling the posting of information under 280 characters by selected users. 113

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in the country. Alvarez’s study observed that the journalists from the mainstream media platforms used Twitter to distribute content that they had already produced, make the content viral and interact with audiences. In the United States, Brad Schultz and Mary Lou Sheffer (2010) undertook a national survey on how sports journalists were using Twitter. The study, theorised on technological determinism (Mcluhan and Fiore 1967), found that there was little change in terms of how the sports journalists diffused Twitter into their day-to-day practice when compared to the predigital era. However, the researchers found that there were notable differences between how younger and older journalists used the platform. Brad Schultz and Mary Lou Sheffer observed that younger journalists valued Twitter and used it in varied ways, but the older journalists used Twitter in a static way, only to share content that was in print editions. In Africa, South African journalists were studied by Peter Verweij and Elvira Noort (2014) in a network analysis of Twitter. The research found that journalists used the platform for crowd sourcing news, breaking news events, live blogging, as well as checking and cultivating sources. Another research project involving large volumes of Twitter data carried out by Portland Communications and Tweetminster (2015), surveying leading journalists in six of Africa’s media hubs—Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda—underlined high social media network use by journalists. Journalists use Twitter to send constant bursts of news to their followers, making Twitter a “normal” journalistic tool. Lasorsa (2012) captures the concept of normalising social media by arguing that journalists are basically transferring their earlier practices and norms onto a new platform.

DIFFUSION OF THE INTERNET IN KENYA There have been varied definitions of the Internet since its creation in the early 1960s by Advanced Research Projects Agency of America’s defense department (Dutton 2013). For the purpose of this study, the BBC’s understanding of the Internet is rather fitting: the Internet is “a global network of computers that works much like the postal system, only at sub-second speeds. Just as the postal service enables people to send one another envelopes containing messages, the Internet enables computers to send one another small packets of digital data” (BBC Webwise 2012). This definition highlights the interconnected nature of the Internet that allows for the sharing of information among users. The fast-paced nature of the Internet is relevant for this study because it bears certain implications on how journalists, especially newspaper reporters, are changing their work routines as a result of this immediate distribution of information. Traditionally, newspaper journalists produce news for a publication that goes to the market stalls almost a day after the occurrence of the events reported. Recorded history of the Internet in Kenya shows the technology diffused into the society in the early 1990s at a time when multiparty democracy was establishing its roots. 114

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Since its independence from British colonial rule in 1963, the country had been a onepolitical-party state with Kenya African National Union (KANU) in power. Available literature suggests that the introduction of the Internet in the country contributed in the emergence of multiparty democracy in Kenya, as information sharing among the people became more networked. According to Muiruri (2007, 65–6), KANU ruled through fear and most of the citizenry was not organized to oppose the government. Kenyans had to accept whatever the government offered in the way of public sector services, and, not surprisingly, public education, security, welfare and communication were dismal … [T] he internet provided a relatively safe forum in which activists could express dissenting views against the government and its state-run institutions.

Although millions of Kenyans have access to the Internet today, only a few thousands could afford the technology in the 1990s as both computers and Internet services were expensive and those who owned computers were seen as members of an elite club. Muiruri (2007) notes that only 4, 000 Kenyans had access to the Internet in 1996, with three Internet service providers, namely the African Regional Centre for Computing, Form-Net African Ltd., and Africa Online, who leased bandwidth from the state-run postal and telecommunication corporation. There was a greater push from the opposition and the society to open up the democratic space for citizens to express themselves and talk about governance. Muiruri (2007) observes that the Internet played a key role at this point in the history of the country: “one of the rallying points for promoting democracy in Kenya, as well as the Internet, was demanding accountability from Staterun institutions” (66, 69). Comparatively, Internet penetration in Kenya is far ahead of the pack in East Africa as Uganda, at 20 per cent penetration rate, comes a distance second. Penetration rates stand at 19 per cent for Rwanda, 5 per cent for Tanzania, 2 per cent for Ethiopia and 1.2 per cent for Burundi (CIPESA 2016). The Communications Authority of Kenya has continued to record increasing penetration rates of the Internet, especially in the urban areas, but infrastructural challenges such as the provision of electricity create problems of access to the Internet. In the region, the Kenyan media is the most vibrant, and has been quick at “diffusing” the innovations of new technology into their newsrooms. All the major media houses have established websites and have presence in social media services such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. These social networks enable newsrooms to interact and debate topical issues with wider audiences and to more efficiently collate the views of the public than ever before. There is also vibrant online citizen journalism (Media Council of Kenya 2012, 9). The media in the country has increasingly adopted new practices to operate effectively in the new landscape. For instance, the Daily Nation in 2012 launched a converged desk to meet the challenges presented by the Internet (Frayintermedia 2014). The development requires reporters to share news on Facebook, Twitter and phone alerts, in a manner as prescribed by the group’s social media policy. This research 115

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therefore sought to understand how the journalists at the Daily Nation are using Twitter as a platform for their work. Twitter particularly presents a challenge for mainstream media journalists who have to wrestle adhering to established professional values such as clarity, balance and truth, among others, while at the same time embracing the immediacy and spontaneity of the social media tool.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK This study employs the diffusion of innovations theoretical framework to examine the deployment of Twitter, as a new innovation, in the newsroom by Kenyan journalists. Rogers (2003, 5) defines diffusion of innovation as “the process through which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among members of a social system.” The innovation could be an idea, practice, or object perceived as new by an individual or other unit of adoption and involves both the mass media and interpersonal communication channels. As a communication theory, Valente and Rogers (1995) note that diffusion of innovations laid the groundwork for studying behaviour change in social systems. Initially, the diffusion of innovations theory did not have roots in communication practice but in agricultural technology, although the discipline has utilised the theory to examine research problems. The origin of the theory is traced to Ryan and Gross (1950) whose seminal study published findings on hybrid seed corn in Iowa. The Iowa corn study analysed conditions and processes under which farmers adopted the technical innovation of hybrid corn, which was new and provided better results than the seeds that the farmers previously used. Ryan and Gross (1950) found that socioeconomic and exposure factors were key to the adoption of the new corn seed innovation. Farmers with a higher socioeconomic status and exposure to the innovation benefitted more. Later, Deutschman and Danielson (1960) laid the foundation for researching diffusion of innovations in communication. Their work built on the S-shaped diffusion curve to explain the spread of innovations. The S-curve explains early, mid and late adopters of innovations in communication. Akin to Deutschman and Danielson’s (1960) S-curve is Rogers’s (2003) model of the five-stage process of diffusion that begins with knowledge of the innovation—the potential adopters are aware of this innovation but lack adequate knowledge to adopt it. At the second stage, the potential adopters are persuaded and their interest in the innovation is aroused. At the third step—the evaluation stage—the potential adopters weigh the pros and cons of using this innovation before entering the fourth stage, called the trial stage, where they try out the innovation. Finally, it is either adopted or rejected at the fifth and final stage. Throughout the decades, an invisible college of diffusion of innovations scholars in communication has grown (Rogers 2004). In Kenya, for instance, Mwithia (2016) used the diffusion of innovations theory to examine how the urban poor in Nairobi integrate the mobile phone into their lives. Mwithia (2016) found that the urban dwellers were fast domesticating the mobile 116

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phone in their lives. Brian Ekdale, Jane Singer, Mellissa Tully and Shawn Harmsen (2015) applied the theory to offer an understanding of news companies undergoing significant changes and the adoption of new technologies. They found that journalists recognised the need to adopt newer technologies in their practice. English (2014) employed the diffusion of innovations theory to understand how sports journalists in Australia, India and the United Kingdom used Twitter in their practice. David Atkin, Daniel Hunt and Carolyn Lin (2015) have called for a deeper understanding of how the diffusion of new technologies could be fuelled by the gratification derived from their use. The present study employs diffusion of innovations to examine the deployment of social media, Twitter in particular, by journalists at the news desk of the Daily Nation in Nairobi, Kenya.

RESEARCH QUESTION AND METHODOLOGY As noted above, this study seeks to explore how reporters at Kenya’s Daily Nation are deploying Twitter in their everyday practice. It specifically examines how the reporters source and disseminate news in the micro-blogging platform that by its nature is characterised by the need for speed in the sharing of information. To answer these interconnected questions, the study used a qualitative methodological approach that employed unstructured interviews. Berger (2015), Rubin and Rubin (2005) observe that such interviews are best suited when seeking to gather data of this nature. Responses from a sample of 14 journalists were collated. The interviews suited this research as the reporters narrated from a personal point of view how they used Twitter in their professional routines, specifically how they sourced and shared news as well as the nature of the feedback received from their followers on the stories they published. The depth of participants’ views on the issues was a key determinant in carrying out the sampling procedures. Therefore, purposive sampling, which considers how research subjects conform to specific criteria, was used (Wimmer and Dominick 2006). In this case, the criteria for selecting the reporters involved checking if they had Twitter accounts that they actively used for professional work and whether they indicated clearly that they were representatives of the Daily Nation on these accounts. Associating their accounts with the newspaper on Twitter necessitates a certain professional etiquette on the part of the reporters as opposed to journalists running anonymous or nondescript accounts, because the credibility of the newspaper is at stake in the Twitter community. All the journalists were drawn from the Daily Nation news desk in Nairobi. Ten of them were male and four were female, which mirrored the glaring gender imbalance in the newsroom. In terms of academic qualifications, they all had first degrees—a minimum entry requirement for working at the Daily Nation news desk. As observed earlier in this paper, the Daily Nation is the largest newspaper in the country and launched a social media policy for its journalists in 2012 and this made it suitable for picking for this

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research. Other mainstream newspapers in Kenya such as the Standard, The Star or The People Daily lack an elaborate and clear social media policy. The section that follows presents the key findings and orders them in a thematic manner. These findings are organised in three broad themes focusing on the authentication of online sources, interaction with readers, and, immediacy or the need for speed in everyday practice.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION One of the key findings of the question of using Twitter for sourcing information is that journalists have developed a multilayered process of authenticating new sources of information, but still largely relied on officialdom as their main sources. The news sources on Twitter interacted with both the journalists and the content more closely than in the traditional newspaper platform—a feature that was enabled by the distinct interactive nature of the social media platform. On the question of using Twitter for the dissemination of news, negotiating the speed required in using Twitter posed a major challenge for the journalists as they sought to balance that with professional demands of accuracy, fairness and truth, among other news values. But over and above such a challenge, Twitter created a parallel market for the journalists to distribute their content away from the traditional newspaper platform. From a theoretical perspective, and in line with the stages of diffusion of innovations articulated earlier (Rogers 2003), this study finds that Kenyan journalists have attained stage five where an innovation is either adopted or rejected. In this case, Twitter has been adopted as a new innovation in the processes of news sourcing and dissemination at the Daily Nation. The diffusion of innovations theory further seeks to understand the structural conditions and the process of the adoption of innovations, and therefore, examining how journalists source news (Manning 2001; Schudson 2003; Tuchman 1978) and how they grade their news sources in a preset hierarchy of credibility and structure (Shoemaker 2001 et al.; Shoemaker and Reese 1996) is critical in developing insights on the nature and quality of news produced (McCombs 2005; McCombs and Shaw 1972). The rest of this section will provide detailed findings clustered around the following interrelated themes: authentication, interaction, the ethics of speed and objectivity, and the parallel market of information.

Authentication of Online Sources The study found a multi-layered process that begins with the journalists identifying particular news sources on Twitter and following them. The journalists then regularly monitor the information that comes from these accounts. There appears to be an overreliance on officialdom—government accounts—while sourcing information. For good

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measure, this is to assure the journalists that the information published by the account is trustworthy. As one reporter explained: The first thing is identifying the important Twitter handles. This can be through referrals, for example, you may find a handle that you know of a senior government official retweeting another handle and then now you can monitor that and confirm if the information is credible. With time, you’ll have aggregated a list of Twitter handles which you can start monitoring for news … After getting a list of handles that you can trust, you keep following their tweets.

While reliance on official sources saves the journalist the shame of dealing with a fake account that has the potential to mislead and give inaccurate information, there may be a real danger of missing out on credible tips and crucial information from regular accounts. The risk remains that officialdom can also use such an opportunity to market themselves, if not spread propaganda, in a situation where they are given exclusive access. The reporters said it was difficult to determine the authenticity of all accounts that they have to deal with. Another cub reporter insisted that it has to be from the verified accounts or nothing: “for me, it has to be from the verified accounts only, not just anybody. Well again, you can’t just dismiss if these other guys share information but it has to be verified accounts. After getting a list of enough accounts, you start monitoring them for news purpose.” Twitter provides verified accounts for some of its users such as politicians, musicians, athletes, journalists or outstanding persons in the society, for credibility. For the journalists in this study, identifying authentic accounts and monitoring their posts was one thing, and verification another. Verification largely rested with getting information outside the Twitter network by calling people or contacting correspondents on the ground in case of an incident. One reporter observed that, “by just looking at it, I view a tweet as a form of (news) tips, just like an SMS, where someone tells you that this and this is happening—which I must confirm and authenticate that is the true position.” This confirms an existing hierarchy that influences what is published, and what is left out. This structure of an existing hierarchy of influences (Shoemaker and Reese 1996) on journalism has been replicated in the process of using Twitter. This has certain implications for the deployment of Twitter by the journalists in their daily practices. For example, McCombs (2005) argues that journalists set the agenda for the public with their treatment of stories, for example by giving some stories higher significance through allocating more space for the newsmakers, while others are given lesser prominence in the same platforms (McCombs and Shaw 1972). McCombs (2005) and Brian McNair (2009) observe that the Internet is the new frontier of this agenda setting. It therefore becomes important how journalists source their news in the digital media. This sourcing could either reinforce the status quo, and marginalise some voices, or empower the voiceless who have not been a part of the news-making cycle in the predigital media era. The section below touches on the interaction with the Twitter community by the journalists. 119

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Interaction with Readers The research found that the conversation on Twitter in Kenya influenced how journalists sourced, produced and disseminated news, and that sometimes the journalists became windsocks moving in the direction of the conversation in the cyberspace (Newman, Dutton, and Blank 2012; Pavlik 2000. While it is good that reporters interviewed for this study said that Twitter had made their work easier by way of getting “subsidised” information on Twitter because of the rise of citizen journalism, the quality of the news agenda may suffer significantly if information from Twitter conversations and posts constitute the only sources that the journalists rely on. Compounded by the heavy reliance on official sources, journalism in Kenya may risk becoming a servant of an elite group, thus inadvertently leading to the advancement of what Hayes Mabweazara refers to as an “elite news culture” (Mabweazara 2011; 2013), which “ignores large parts of human existence outside social media platforms” (Mabweazara 2014, 77). This “elite news culture” is reinforced by the fact that conversations on Twitter in Kenya are not representative enough, owing to the significant divide in digital access and skills. There is a possibility that matters of interest that concern the larger society are given a wide berth by Twitter users, who constitute less than five per cent of the total population. While it is true that there is significant growth in Internet access (BAKE 2016), the majority of Kenyans live in rural areas where infrastructure such as electricity is poor and radio forms the main source of information. This, therefore, brings to the fore the question whether Twitter in Kenya is reinforcing existing class divisions and a social order where a few privileged citizens with access to the Internet and digital tools and skills set the agenda for the larger group, effectively locking out the majority rural population. This study could not adequately answer that question and there is need for a deeper and extensive probe into these concerns. The interactive nature of Twitter is a distinct feature the reporters said they enjoyed as it brings out the conversational aspect of conducting journalism in a networked environment, as opposed to publishing stories in the newspaper (Artwick 2013; Bowman and Willis 2003; Boyd 2010; Domingo et al. 2008; Hermida 2010a; Hermida 2010b; Singer et al. 2011). The reporters share news on Twitter by linking the stories they produce to their profiles. They also tweet directly the information they wish to share to their followers without necessarily linking it to the website and may also include a series of tweets on the same subject. If a journalist is covering parliamentary proceedings or a conference, they may send out a series of tweets that have a hashtag relevant to the conference, say #BudgetDay2017 to show that the tweets are based on readings of the government budget. In other cases, the reporters are forced to tag specific people in stories if they seek commentary on an issue. A reporter explained:

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You don’t just share it out there (on Twitter)—you know its’ a haystack—there’s so much news generated every second so you have to be specific who you are targeting. If you want Uhuru (the president) to read your article, you send it to him, and such. That’s what I usually do.

Retweets mean that followers in the network repost the information on their news feed. The reporters noted that they gauged how well their stories resonated with the readers by the number of retweets, “favourites” and replies or comments they received. As one political reporter explained: “If it’s an interesting story, there is usually responses, retweets, replies from people asking more information on the story and favourites.” Interaction with the Twitter community entails engaging with the readers through various features that the platform provides, and these include the retweet or favourite buttons and the comments and reply section. One senior reporter gave an example of how Twitter helped to advance a story after the UK, the US, France and Australia issued travel advisories against Kenya due to terrorist threats from the war-torn neighbouring country, Somalia: I tweeted about it and some guys from Mombasa told me that they had seen queues—long queues—of tourists leaving at the Moi International Airport. They said they had also seen some hotels that had closed. I now used that—that new information—to follow up the story with help from our Mombasa office.

Another news reporter pointed out that if they post a tweet that excites their followers, it gives them the impetus to prepare the full story and share it. If there are requests for clarifications that information eventually needs to be in the story that you are sharing. Some noted that feedback from readers, especially on political stories, was laced with ethnic vitriol and it was the duty of the reporter to wade out of such: “To a certain extent, some people will look at it through the tribal lines—some though not everyone—while others will be very objective and give you some positive feedback which now I include and forget about the trivial ones about ethnicity and stuff.”

The Ethics of Negotiating Speed and Accuracy Reporters in the study noted that they were concerned about journalism ethics while using Twitter just as they mind them while writing for the mainstream media (Dale 2007; Keeble 2008; Meyers 2010). The critical question was how to strike a balance between going out fast, as well as being first, with news on Twitter while minding the accuracy of the information dispatched, fairness on persons being reported on, objectivity on the issues and without losing clarity or balance. It is a matter of fact that urgency or immediacy of information on Twitter is of a higher premium (this is the main reason why Twitter is ideal for breaking news and describes itself as a real-time information network), which presents a potential challenge for the journalists to step back for a while and give the information a third eye, verify or critique it (Deuze 2003;

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Hermida 2012). One participant remarked, “that’s the most challenging thing … tying accuracy to speed.” Another journalist observed that in theory, issues concerning journalism ethics on Twitter are accorded the same seriousness as if writing for the newspaper, but in practice they are not. The reporter added that they had noted colleagues who go out fast with information, hoping to be the first to tell it on Twitter, at the expense of core ethical issues in journalism. Another participant observed that the reputation of a journalist is higher than that of a blogger, and that people tend to believe the tweets of the journalists as they are seen as credible. There was a unanimous response from the participants that telling the truth was not negotiable, and this prompted them to step back most of the times and confirm the tweets that they were sending out. For some, the fear that some Twitter users could send them false information served to increase their vigilance on how they processed their tweets. The journalists also expressed concern that a lack of caution while tweeting could inflame ethnic tensions and animosity among people, especially when it is on matters political. “In Kenya, the tribe issue is a very hot issue,” one said. There was also the sense of collective responsibility on the part of the journalists who felt that their tweets— whether true or not—were viewed by their followers as representing the position of their employer, even if they shared them on their personal profiles. The delay in being the first to go out with the news was described by one reporter as “pain” because of knowledge of the fact that there is a reader who relies on what the journalist tweets for information about the world.

The Parallel Market of Information The study also found that Twitter has provided Kenyan journalists with a new market of information (Moyo 2009) away from their traditional mainstream platforms. If a market is to be seen as a place where one can buy or sell wares, then these journalists have found Twitter to be the place where they can log on to sources and gather story ideas and news tips as well as sell and distribute content that they have already produced. This research found that by targeting and tagging specific audiences on Twitter posts, such as people with authority or in a position to provide key information, the journalists get quicker responses for certain news stories that require follow-ups or official comments. This has been enabled by the disintegrated nature of the audience that the new media tool creates. There was no evidence to show that the journalists are creating new content on Twitter. This implies that they are only sharing an already-produced content available on their main platforms—except for the case of breaking news that goes first to the subscribers of the paid service. Effectively, this means that the journalists found Twitter to be just another place where they can distribute already-existing content. The news items 122

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peddled by Daily Nation journalists were found to be desirable by their audience and easily attracted numerous reposts, comments and favourites because of their perceived status—that they stand for the truth and that the information they send out would likely be authenticated first. Having their Twitter accounts appended to their bylines in the newspaper and also the news website gave the journalists an edge, drawing thousands and thousands of followers to their accounts. In the Twitter market, they could be seen as nodes around which other users would gather. This research found that sometimes the journalists would use their position on Twitter for social good. Take for instance when one reposts a tweet from the Kenya Red Cross with information about a lost child or a patient in dire need of blood donation. The journalists would use their unique position as a node in these cases to repost the information to a wider network under them.

CONCLUSION Loughran (2010) challenges Kenyan journalism and maintains that at the end of it all, the big questions on its contribution to the social health of the country and the developing world at large will be: “Did they speak out for the innocent, defend the powerless, accuse the guilty, and pillory the thieves? Did they ask the awkward question, investigate, press, persist, excavate and discomfort?” This research sought to understand how journalists in Kenya are deploying the new media tool of Twitter in their everyday practice. Drawing from the evidence gathered in this research and the structural conditions examined through the diffusion of innovations theory, access and control of media in Kenya appears skewed in favour of the rich and powerful elite of the society, leaving journalists caught up either as puppets of officialdom or the proprietors of their newsrooms. It has been said of journalism that it ought to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, but this noble cause remains cast in doubt in such a context. This research recommends that journalists must find new ways of establishing the credibility of ordinary citizens and including their voices in the content that they produce. Twitter should encourage media pluralism and diversity, rather than conform to the existing status quo. But this should be done in a cautious manner to ensure than professional journalism is not compromised by the need for speed in distributing content. While it is fine, indeed a good thing, to embrace the plethora of new media tools available today, such as Twitter, in telling the stories of and about Kenyans, such tools should be seen to play complementary roles to comprehensive, in-depth and critical journalism and should give the public—the real people in their everyday situations—a more representative voice. Following the manner in which journalists select the stories they tell about Kenyans, such tools should not just be used to reinforce existing social class strata where the worldview of the rich, powerful and privileged few mutes the voice of the masses. 123

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This research found that how stories are selected and the hierarchy of credible news sources work in favour of the privileged members of the Kenyan society. This is principally because Kenyan journalists are deeply wedded to the Western journalism model whose political-economy structures have profits at the bottom line. Journalism should not be a thing done unto the people, it should be for the people—the essence of public interest. More and more voices away from officialdom should be incorporated in the stories that are told about the people. This study found that journalists have adopted new media platforms such as Twitter in their profession and gives nuances regarding the deployment of such tools. It reveals that the voice of the “normal” citizen has been marginalised and is only to be heard when giving an account as a witness: in a road accident, concerning how the fire started or how the floods swept away their homes. On the other hand, many of the narratives by the reporters are based on what those in authority are doing and saying—even their inaction and silence make the news. This should be news, but only when the reporters bear in mind that a significant part of the population in Kenya is not using Twitter, or the Internet at that, and there is a real danger of telling stories that appear too distant for a people only too close.

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