Natalie Moss
Staging democracy: Kenya's televised presidential debates
Moss, Natalie; O'Hare, Alasdair
Authors
Alasdair O'Hare
Abstract
Kenyan election campaigning took a novel turn in 2013 with the introduction of televised presidential debates. The two debates were widely celebrated as signalling a positive turn in Kenyan campaigning, from the politics of personality and ethnicity towards a more sober, issue-based form of electoral competition. Organised by the nation's main media houses, the debates offer a unique lens through which to consider the role the media defined for itself during the election period. This paper argues that the debates were staged as part of the media's broader project of ‘peace promotion’. In this way, actual debate between the candidates was of secondary importance to the spectacle of having all eight candidates amicably share the debate floor. This paper's approach thus emphasises the theatrical nature of the performances and the deliberate way in which they were designed to present a portrait of Kenya's maturing democracy. The paper concludes by situating these media spectacles within what is perceived to be a broader trend in Kenya whereby seductive images of the nation's future are produced and projected, thereby distracting from present realities.
Citation
Moss, N., & O'Hare, A. (2014). Staging democracy: Kenya's televised presidential debates. Journal of Eastern African Studies, 8(1), 78-92. https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2013.869929
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | Nov 20, 2013 |
Online Publication Date | Jan 17, 2014 |
Publication Date | Jan 17, 2014 |
Deposit Date | Feb 8, 2018 |
Publicly Available Date | Feb 8, 2018 |
Journal | Journal of Eastern African Studies |
Print ISSN | 1753-1055 |
Electronic ISSN | 1753-1063 |
Publisher | British Institute in Eastern Africa |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 8 |
Issue | 1 |
Pages | 78-92 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2013.869929 |
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Copyright Statement
© 2014 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.
org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is
properly cited. The moral rights of the named author(s) have been asserted.
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