When the Reproductive Healthcare and the Assisted Reproductive Technology bills were both introduced to Parliament in 2019, this marked the beginning of a transformative journey for public health in Kenya.
Sponsored by Nakuru Senator Susan Kihika and Mbita MP Millie Odhiambo respectively, the bills sought to develop standards, regulations and guidelines on assisted reproduction for individuals and couples with conception challenges due to infertility.
The bills would also make prenatal, delivery and postnatal services free for all women in Kenya.
With clauses on surrogacy and abortion, however, these bills were expected to stir a heightened public debate in the country right from the start.
But what observers never saw coming was the infiltration of foreign entities into the national discussion, altering its course through misinformation and disinformation, through social media.
Findings of a two-year research firm Mozilla now reveal how Spanish right-wing political organisation CitizenGo manipulated the discourse on social media, by tapping into Kenya’s growing ‘‘disinformation industry.’’
It has emerged that the organisation paid hundreds of influencers to carry out a vicious misinformation campaign on Twitter aimed at rocking the bills.
According to Mozilla, CitizenGo played ‘‘an outsized role’’ in steering Twitter conversations by inserting misinformation and inflammatory rhetoric’’ in the debate to ‘‘frustrate any attempts to have factual conversations’’ put forward and to ‘‘create moral panic around the issues’’ raised.
With findings of a 2022 survey by Edelman Trust Barometer showing that 49 percent of Kenyans trust what they see on social media, a campaign of this nature can potentially mislead half the country.
The paid influencers attacked Kenyan politicians and activists, especially women, who supported the health bills and reproductive rights. At different points between 2020 and 2021, #StopKihikaAbortion, #PassarisAbortionKills and #NoToAbortionKE were among the top trends in Kenya.
Away from social media, the organisation ran a petition on their online site, claiming that abortion was about to be legalised in Kenya.
‘‘You need to move fast and stop the back door legalisation of abortion through the Reproductive HealthCare Bill that has already gone through the second reading in the Senate,’’ the petitioners appealed.
More than 26000 signed the petition
On the Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill, CitizenGo ran a headline on the site screaming: ‘‘Stop the baby manufacturing bill by Hon Millie Odhiambo in the National Assembly urgently.’’ More than 3,000 people signed it.
But who is CitizenGo?
The organisation describes itself as ‘‘a community of active citizens that seeks to promote the participation of society in politics.’’
With more than 17 million members, the platform, which is based in Madrid, uses online petitions and action alerts ‘‘to defend and promote life, family, and liberty’’ and to compel those in power ‘‘to respect human dignity and individuals’ rights.’’
It uses 12 languages to drive petitions to influence the ideologies of ‘‘institutions, governments and organisations’’ all over the world. Funded through donations, CitizenGo has been labelled an anti-immigrant and anti-gender organisation and is associated with far-right movements in Italy, Hungary and Germany.
Meanwhile, the Twitter campaigns, which the researchers describe as both inauthentic and coordinated, made misleading and false and claims on abortion and surrogacy. One such spurious claim made was that children born through surrogacy are more likely to exhibit behavioural and emotional conditions.
The African Population Health Research Center (APHRC) dismisses the claim as devoid of empirical scientific evidence.
At the centre of the saga is the social media platform Twitter, which has been blamed for ‘‘facilitating’’ the misinformation through ‘‘Trending’’ topics feature that amplified at least 10 related hashtags making them trend in Kenya at different points.
During the research, Mozilla fellow Odanga Madung found out that thousands of the tweets came from accounts that had no other content other than the hashtags, raising queries on whether some of these accounts had been created specifically to drive the agenda.
In past incidents, some influencers on Twitter have been hired to malign individuals or companies through targeted messaging. Mozilla researchers say these individuals are often recruited through WhatsApp groups where planning also takes place.
Says Mr Madung: ‘‘Recruitment is based on money and not ideology. [They] can be bought to tweet content of all types, provided you pay them.’’ Interestingly, when approached, owners of some of the participating accounts in the campaign admitted to having received ‘‘money, content and instructions’’ from CitizenGo through WhatsApp.
In a country where the majority of educated youth are unemployed, online jobs are an instant pull. Sometimes these are done with the promise of as little as data bundles. Their desperation makes this demographic an easy target for instigators of misinformation and other negative campaigns.
Even more astonishingly, the conversations by this army of influencers not only led to dissent on Twitter, researchers say, but they may also have influenced the parliamentary legislative decision-making process.
During this campaign, recruits used identical hashtags, phrases and memes to drive the talk. These were also synchronised to appear at specific times of the day to boost visibility.
When Twitter was presented with the research findings this year, the company suspended more than 240 accounts associated with the campaign for violating their Terms and Conditions.
CitizenGo did not respond to the finding of the research.
While this group of Twitter users may have been kicked out of the platform, the threat remains alive. Kenya’s General Elections are barely five months away, a season when the vices of disinformation and misinformation thrive.
Experts fear that many more fake accounts will likely emerge as part of the propaganda machine to manipulate the political discourse.
Titled ‘The Cycle of Distrust’ the report released this week by Edelman Barometer Trust shows that misinformation and fake news are at an all-time high in the country, with 81 percent of Kenyans concerned that these can be weaponised.
Kenya, though, is not new to campaign misinformation and disinformation. ‘‘Fake news’’ and propaganda were common features in the General Elections of 2013 and 2017, with a stream of falsehoods manufactured to mislead voters.
Presidential candidate Raila Odinga claimed that one of the fake news campaigns had been masterminded by the now-defunct PR firm Cambridge Analytica to discredit him among the voters –to the advantage of the Jubilee government.
With another election in the offing, Mr Madung says Kenyan regulators must work with social media companies to conduct a Kenya-specific risks assessment for disinformation before, during and after the elections.
‘‘Twitter should be more transparent about how they are reforming their Trending algorithm to curb disinformation.’’ He notes there is a need for social media companies to develop partnerships with Kenyan fact-checking institutions to weed out bad elements.
Kenyans, however, have a responsibility to engage in safe and responsible use of social media.
Mr Madung says: ‘‘Always check the date of an article or tweet to see if it is old news. Verify the news outlet or Twitter handle. Find out if the messenger is recognisable and trustworthy before [consuming their content]. It helps to cross-check coverage of an item to see if the claims are substantiated elsewhere.’’
If unsure of an image, users are advised to verify it using reverse image search tools. He notes that this also helps to track the authenticity of the content and to flag plagiarised material.
There is evidence that CitizenGo is already exporting its model of petitions, campaigns and offline lobbying to Nigeria and Tanzania, according to Mozilla. These seek to deny women their human rights such as healthcare and family life.
For a conservative country that is 85 percent Christian, web researchers say Kenya acts as an ideal testing ground for messaging, activities and methods aimed at the rest of Africa, regarded as ‘‘a bastion of hope’’.
‘‘The religious and far-right have lost the fight against gender rights in the West. They are turning their focus to poorer countries where they use their millions to buy influence, manipulate the political agenda and expand their base of adherents,” says British human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell.
Under the Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act, Mr Madung acknowledges that Kenya has the basic frameworks in place to protect citizens against misinformation and disinformation. In recent years, the government has carried out crackdowns on criminals in cyberspace, with some taken to court.
Experts concur that where Kenya’s law falls short is in the protection of citizens from foreign entities that may impose themselves in local discourses from the shadows, to mislead, misinform and influence them in a particular direction.
Mr Madung observes that social media platforms are designed in a way that rewards outrage and anger such that “hate and disinformation are amplified over civility and truth”. He notes that when millions of users’ feeds are crowded with harmful content, society at large suffers.
Elsewhere, Twitter’s Trending algorithm has been manipulated by foreign entities for various interests. A case in point is in South Africa where PR company Bell Pottinger was hired allegedly to run a secret campaign aimed at stirring up racial tensions on behalf of the firm’s billionaire clients.
It is from these unrelated incidents that Mozilla researchers argue that Twitter has failed to understand the cultural context of its users, to do adequate staffing to enable it to”meaningfully address how the platform can be weaponised by bad actors”.
Globally, one of the major questions today is whether social media companies are responsible for content posted on their platforms. Mr Madung observes that tech companies regularly make editorial decisions to control content through their algorithms.
He emphasises that if these companies are to operate and earn money in a region, it behoves them to arrest discussions that sow disinformation and hate speech.
‘‘It is a moral, civic and legal responsibility,’’ he says, lamenting that Twitter is not taking this responsibility seriously in Kenya at the moment.
