Tweeting Government: An Analysis of Kenya’s National Executive Leaders’ Use of Twitter as a Communication Tool

Abstract

Important political conversations in Kenya have taken place on the Twitter micro-blogging social media platform. In 2013, a ‘digital’ government led by Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto embraced Twitter as a medium of communication. This study is an empirical assessment of the nature of Twitter’s use in government communication by all the members of Kenya’s National Executive (NE) who include: The President, his Deputy, Cabinet Secretaries and the Attorney-General, from July 2016, when the government year began, to September 2016. The aim of this study was to analyze the extent to which Kenya’s National Executive Leaders (NELs) were using Twitter in their daily work, interacting with online audiences and applying dialogic content strategies in their Twitter profiles to establish and enhance relations with their online followers and citizens. An interaction analysis found that majority of the National Executive Leaders had low interactions with their followers at 66.7 per cent, while only 1.9 per cent of the understudy had highest interactions with their followers, 14.7 per cent had average interactions, 13 per cent had high interactions while 3.7 per cent had the lowest interactions. Leaders used the Twitter platform to broadcast formal information as the study found that 87.5 per cent of the broadcast information related to government activities while 12.5 per cent published content unrelated to government activities. Of the three dialogic principles investigated, only usefulness of information was significant, while both dialogic loop and the generation of return visits were absent indicating a more content-focus as opposed to engagement with followers. The findings show that the situation on the use of Twitter for governance needs to improve. Further research should focus on how the leaders are using other social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, blogs, and YouTube for effective governance.