SOCIAL MEDIA AND PARLIAMENTARY ENGAGEMENT
media especially within the political front. To start with, there is a need to exercise caution in the information that goes out to the public. While facilitating civic engagement for a more participatory democracy, social media is often misused for propaganda, hate speech, and disinformation campaigns, which can undermine the pluralistic foundations of democracy.6
“While facilitating civic engagement for a more participatory democracy, social media is often misused for propaganda, hate speech, and disinformation campaigns, which can undermine the pluralistic foundations of democracy.”
In the endeavour to educate the people, politicians especially, should ensure there is no disinformation. Factchecking then becomes an important emerging issue within the social media platforms. It is an open secret that politicians would sometimes make use of disinformation for their own selfish political gains. A legislation will be passed but the interpretation that is made is distorted or out-rightly wrong to create a predetermined notion. This misinformation may be used to pass hate speech, targeted violence and terrorist activities. It is therefore fulfilling to note that some of these platforms, like Facebook, have elaborate fact-checking frameworks that ensure that only the properly verified information is posted. Sadly, the current frameworks do not prevent misinformation but provide mechanisms for pulling down already posted data. You will note that sometimes, the information is usually already accessed by thousands of people before the fact-checking and pulling down happens.
It is therefore incumbent on all users, especially political players to ensure only the right information is passed. As the Parliament of Kenya, we continue to monitor the social media activities and information relating to the institution and correcting any wrong information. However, as a proactive endeavour, we have embarked on opening up the legislative activities and involving all stakeholders to ensure that all resolutions of the Houses and their implications to the country are known to avoid misinformation from other quarters. Finally, Parliaments have to continue adapting to the digital developments in the world. Whereas it may be said that social media operates as a community with its own rules of informality, Legislatures should not lose their practices and traditions when engaging in the platforms. They should therefore seek to conform to social media rules, while maintaining institutional credibility. In the end, it is for Legislatures to be agile and to
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make use of the opportunities offered by the platforms to advance their constitutional mandates. References: Chen, P.J., Australian Politics in a Digital Age, ANU Press – accessed via https://www.jstor. org/stable/j.ctt2jbkkn.11 2 Mahapatra S. and Plagemann J. (2019) Polarisation and Politicisation: The Social Media Strategies of Indian Political Parties, German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA) accessed via https://www. jstor.org/stable/resrep24806 3 United Nations (2015). Information economy report 2015. Unlocking the Potential of E-commerce for Developing Countries. Geneva: United Nations. 4 The Constitution of Kenya (2010) – accessible at: http://kenyalaw. org/kl/index.php?id=398 5 Chen P.J., Ibid. 6 Mahapatra S. and Plagemann J. (2019), Polarisation and Politicisation: The Social Media Strategies of Indian Political Parties, German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA) accessed via https://www.jstor.org/stable/ resrep24806. 1
