Social Media is the New Front of Shaping Public Opinion in Developing World: Case of July 2024 Gen Z Protests in Kenya
Abstract
The July 2024 Gen Z national protests in Kenya against the Finance Bill 2024/25, ushered in a new digital era and discourse on social media community. Striking was the new feature of shaping public opinion in the developing world, perennially locked in a geographic prison of ideas. The Gen Z protest organization and conduct of dissent strategy that included medical, legal and socio-psychological support for participants, made history of the first modern-time developing society within the Global South hemisphere. This paper examines the new phenomenon looking at the changing times in democratic governance spaces in the developing world enabled by the new digital technologies and Artificial Intelligence capabilities. The postcolonial societies in Africa for over two generations, and 60 years of independence have witnessed massive failures in public policy that is crashing to a halt in the 21st Century. The Gen Z of Kenya, identifying themselves during the protest campaigns as, “Leaderless, tribeless and partyless” births a new resistance movement against generational imposed ethnic politics in Kenya with the potential to proliferate across Sub-Sahara Africa. The study makes profound findings linked to the colonial legacies of foreign control, dependence, manipulations, exploitation and marginalization. The paper recommends changes to political, economic, education, cultural and foreign policies in Kenya to address the contemporary challenges facing the dystopic postcolonial society in Africa for renewed re-orientation and societal growth and development.
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