The Problem

Lucina Di Meco, the co-founder of #ShePersisted and gender expert, describes gendered disinformation as ‘the spread of deceptive or inaccurate information and images against women political leaders, journalists and female public figures” in a way that draws on misogyny and societal stereotypes.

There are various attacks under the gender disinformation umbrella. These include

1. Higher standards for proving qualifications i.e. qualifications are attacked.
2. Appearance-based attacks.
3. Too much focus on appearance such as weight.
4. Threats that are more violent, ethnic, tribal and sexist. (For the Kenyan context, race was not perceived to be a prevalent issue and was replaced with tribal and ethnic).
5. Double bind around family responsibilities
6. Sexualised attacks meant to humiliate and demean
7. Attacks based on female politicians advocating for SRH

‍

Nendo was therefore contracted by #ShePersisted to investigate these attacks in the Kenyan context. In order to do this, Nendo utilised three methodologies:

• Social Media Listening 
• Media monitoring 
• WhatsApp Focus Groups

‍

Social Media Listening

We conducted social media listening by utilising Brandwatch, the world's leading social listening tool. After identifying women in various leadership spaces in politics, media, public office and business, we tracked sentiments and conversations around them in order to uncover any forms of attack in the social media space.

‍

We uncovered that most female political figures face negative comments and perceptions from social media users. The graph above shows the negative sentiments towards 15 female political figures in Kenya. The figure shows Martha Karua was largely targeted and attacked followed by Alice Wahome among other key politicians. However, the data may be skewed towards Martha Karua as she has the largest following and big media coverage attributed to her being announced as Raila Odinga's running mate in the 2022 general elections. 

Female politicians face tribal attacks which consist of 44% of the attacks observed. This is followed by insult attacks, high qualification and appearance-based attacks respectively as shown in the chart below. The mentioned attacks were mainly from media publishers who played an influential role in sharing these opinions publicly. The women also face sexualised attacks, through images and memes, that is meant to humiliate and demean them.

‍

‍

Radio Media Monitoring

Nendo conducted two media monitoring reports covering the periods from 22nd February - 22nd March and 6th May - 6th Jun 2022. The radio media monitoring reports focused on the radio and explored how anti-sexual reproductive health and anti-gender content surfaced through scans of hours of radio programming across several popular radio stations. Topics that constitute gender disinformation are not discussed on air while reproductive health, as well as FGM, topics are widely covered by various local radio stations.

‍

WhatsApp Focus Groups

Nendo conducted four WhatsApp focus group discussions that were aimed to help the #ShePersisted team with the following:

• Understand WhatsApp usage and behaviour among our recruited participants.
• Understand the different types of WhatsApp groups people are in and why they are in these groups.
• Explore and understand the usage of Telegram as a rival to WhatsApp.
• Understand people's thoughts, perceptions, discernment and behaviour around WhatsApp,  Telegram, and any misinformation, disinformation, or mal-information shared in them.
• Understand our participants’ thoughts, perceptions, discernment and behaviour in the sexual and reproductive healthcare space.

Through the WhatsApp Focus Groups, we uncovered the following:

• Sexual and reproductive health is an intimate topic that participants claimed is mostly done face-to-face or within small groups of very close friends. They are rarely discussed within family forums.
• There was scepticism expressed around the use of herbalists and home remedies. Participants indicated they would need to seek a second medical opinion or search for testimonials before fully trusting the herbalist.
• The World Health Organisation (WHO) appeared wholly trusted across the board while participants were divided on Kenya’s Ministry of Health owing to allegations of corruption.

Our Recommendations for Future interventions

After conducting in-depth research utilising mixed methods, Nendo concluded the study by submitting the following recommendations.

• Capturing peer-to-peer insights and creating a playbook for prominent women online.
• Creating a StopReflectVerify.com guide to gendered disinformation.
• Track and publish a radio and TV media report.
• Create Kenya's Big Tech platform scorecard for accountability
• Support gender civil society organisations with a social listening “Centre of Excellence”.
• Conducting and tracking a long-term male and female perception study.