Social Media and Governance: Appropriation and Modalities of Use in Kakamega County Governance in Kenya

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume VI, Issue IV, April 2022 | ISSN 2454–6186

Social Media and Governance: Appropriation and Modalities of Use in Kakamega County Governance in Kenya

Brenda Mulama
Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Nairobi, Kenya

Abstract
Continuous communication to citizens is significant in any government. Therefore, employing social media as a communication tool in accessing public opinion is imperative. The two tiers of government in Kenya- central and county are progressively incorporating social media. To determine the efficacy and use of social media, there is a need to examine how it is used at the grassroots. This study looked at how the County Government of Kakamega in Kenya is using social media to enhance governance based on the factors informing appropriation of social media and modalities of use of social media in governance. A mixed-methods approach, using the convergent parallel mixed-method research design was utilized. The target population was 34 participants in charge of the communication units at the County. The study concluded that Facebook was the overriding social media platform for enhancing governance and that social media use in governance is ineffective in the Kakamega county government. The study recommends that the county government should train more personnel on social media and digital marketing tools to enhance the usage of social media to disseminate information to the residents. It is hoped that the findings of this research will benefit scholarship as social media is still a new sensation, especially at the grassroots, and there is a significant gap on what it can and cannot do in relation to governance.

Key terms: Social media; Governance; appropriation; Modalities; Grassroots

Background

Today, the world encounters significant challenges in promoting governance, democracy, transparency, press freedom, and economic development. According to Liu (2017), good governance is essential for a nation’s long-term and sustainable development. Social media, as an important information source, plays a crucial role in shaping a healthy democracy and bolstering good governance. According to Oginni & Moitui (2015), the policy-making process and effective governance require quality input, feedback mechanisms, and timely communication of decisions. Social media may act as a catalyst for processes of organizational innovation related to how public authorities exercise power and deliver services (Bergquist et al., 2017). They further note that much of the power of social media comes from the simple fact that media can tell people things that they would not otherwise know and informs people about government actions and decisions, one purpose of public opinion is to inform public policymaking. Accordingly, this study will investigate how social media is used and its effectiveness in Kakamega County governance to disseminate information to the residents up to the grassroots levels.
The importance of social media use in governance has been emphasized by a number of scholars in the field of communication and governance. Also, the internet and social media contains vast amounts of unexploited possibilities about the kind of politics possible and how politics should be practised (Smith, 2017). Smith (2017) argues that the internet allows for greater public engagement in politics. In addition, online space presents an extra liberal political realm as it is not guarded by the traditional barriers of physical time and space. Hence, this study will determine levels of public participation in Kakamega County Government affairs. Numerous studies have been conducted to assess whether online political participation can be an adequate substitute for offline engagement (Kersting, 2016).

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