Mediatised Horserace Political Analyses: Interrogating the 2017 General Elections Political Propaganda in Kenya

Abstract

Horserace political analysis is the practice of scrutinising political situation, players and institutions based on their perceived popularity, polling data, public perception and opinion instead of their policy and workable agenda. It is more of a propaganda and biased analysis than an informed, objective and balanced undertaking. It is born of propaganda political analyses which are analyses lacking objectivity and balance as they favour one political side and defame the opponents in explicit terms. The political propaganda analysed in this paper are from NASA and Jubilee political parties in Kenya and could be considered as both professional and gutter media depending on the perspective of the viewer and listener. The assumption of the researchers is that these political propagandists were paid as spin doctors to produce political stunts that favoured identifiable political factions. The theoretical framework was constituted of three media theories; the political economy of media, the agenda setting theory of media and the propaganda theory. The data for this paper was obtained from political propaganda video clips from YouTube which by nature of their perspective were considered radically pro-Jubilee and Pro-NASA. The findings show that during the 2017 general elections in Kenya, through political propagandists, both NASA and Jubilee political sides produced considerable propaganda which was ethnically energized.