The top-bottom model espoused by the traditional media structures is being problematized by the emerging technological change in the 21st century. Kenya presents an example of bottom-top model, which is a challenge to the hegemonic potential of top-down model. In the discussion that follows, we will establish how media in Kenya have been operating within a top-bottom model until recently. This top-bottom model has been problematized by the emergence of the new communication technologies (NCTs), which have allowed individuals to challenge dominant voices and myths, alter representation and meaning of symbols and vocabulary, and re-define politico-social structures around which the luminal rituals of the national have been interwoven for the sole purpose of fostering group cohesion. We argue in this discussion that the proliferation of NCTs and communication strategies have dismembered the nation by stimulating exponential multiplication of discursive regimes that may have been impossible previously when media technologies were confined to the control of a central, and oftentimes restrictive authority. It is against this background that we seek to probe the extent to which media technologies are ineffaceably co-opted into designs of the dominant ideology and various other hegemonic structures.

Are there events that temporarily unite differences among ethnic groups in a multiethnic nation state? Using a Kenya’s drought-relief initiative, dubbed Kenyans4Kenya (K4K), this article responds to this question. It uses framing analysis to examine how K4K and its followers constructed messages to deliberately generate empathy for the drought victims. Messages on K4K’s Facebook page were placed in three collective frames: diagnostic, prognostic and motivational. They were also coded according to three identified thematic frames: anti-regime, humanitarian, and patriotism/ national pride. The findings of this study demonstrate the success of K4K in its ability to frame a humanitarian crisis in a way that rendered the divisive fissures of ethnic differences temporarily insignificance and inconspicuous. K4K successfully cast the pain and suffering of the drought victims as unwarranted by locating its discourse within the ambit of a nation that had failed to provide its citizens with the very basic of human rights.

One of the many consequences of globalization and the new world order is the increased cross border interaction among people, leading to more transfer and exchange of knowledge, technology, values and virtues, vices and viruses, and other traits among nations. One area that has been impacted heavily by this flow, largely aided by the Internet and other emerging media, is culture. To a large extent, though, the transfer of cultural practices appears to be more from the western and more developed world to the weaker, economically and politically less powerful nations. But what is borrowed is indigenized, sometimes entirely altered, to meet the needs of local communities. These changes are reflected in Africa’s music scene, dances, and other genres of popular culture. Within that context, this chapter aims at meeting two goals. First, to analyze the extent to which musicians, especially the youth, have managed to maintain a balance between educating and entertaining society at the local level, while keeping abreast with emerging global trends and influences. Particularly, it will show how the young generation of East African musicians uses music to sensitize the public by serving as critics of the management of public affairs and how this has contributed to political change. Secondly, it will investigate the effects that these emerging practices have had on the use of African languages in the performing arts.

The article focuses on the use of metaphors during the 2007 pre-and post-election violence in Kenya that left at least 1400 people dead and more than 350,000 internally displaced. During and after the violence, vernacular radio stations, though not entirely responsible for the violence, were highly chastised for constructing and disseminating narratives of hate, using embellished metaphors.This article acknowledges the presence of these metaphors and the ethnicized stereotypical humour they provided before the election. But it is the political tension that provided the context for the deployment of metaphors in a way that framed their meaning and potency of use. Whether these metaphors contributed to fanning ethnic passion cannot be quantitatively assessed. However, their potency was not in themselves, but in the meaning imbued in them; which was as fluid and transient as the context changed. Metaphors, therefore, became substitutes for past ethnic grievances. They served as a rallying cry and a call to arms, not because of the totality of what can be inferred from them, both positive and negative, but their signification of the aspects of difference. It is this difference, which was exploited during the election violence, not because of the metaphors but in spite of them. With the background of the political tension that suffocated the country, metaphors became materials to propagate ethnic identities and a basis for ethnic nomenclature.

The activities surrounding new communication technologies (NCTs), more than the technology itself, have introduced new perspectives in the field of media studies, especially with the intensification of audience participation. This participation is imbued with the potential to challenge dominant voices and national myths, alter the representation and meaning of symbols and vocabulary, and redefine politico-social structures into which the luminal rituals of the national have been interwoven, for the sole purpose of fostering national cohesion. But it is the universal nature of NCTs that has significantly imbued local cultures with a global consciousness, thus altering the previous global flow of information. By using Ushahidi -open source software for information gathering and interactive mapping, which started as a blog in Kenya and is now used across the globe -the study demonstrates NCTs' efficacy in engendering multiplicity of alternative voices which do not necessarily flow from the global North.