Political Economy of Reporting Presidential Politics: Towards Ethnopolitical Oligarchy Construction in Kenya

Description

This book interrogates the utility of ethnopolitics to political players, examines the value of ethnopolitical journalism, analyses the utility of ethnopolitics and ethnopolitical Journalism, and models the electoral process players’ interaction matrix that leads to ethnopolitical oligarchy construction in Kenya. The book notes that in recent years, ethnicity has become a divisive factor in politics, where political players use it to gain mileage and relevance in their ethnic constituencies and regions. At the same time, cultural institutions like the media exploit it for economic gains. The author avers that ethnopolitics is responsible for ethnopolitical oligarchy establishment and sustenance because it empowers a few ethnic groups to rise to political power and isolate the rest. The phenomenon (ethnopolitics) ensures that national resources are concentrated within a few ethnic groups controlling power. The author shows that the gladiators of ethnopolitics are the implicit beneficiaries of the same, where the mass media is at the fore. The book’s subject matter pumps new perspectives to the existing knowledge in communication and media studies and the political economy of mass media. It is a book that scholars interested in political science, political communication, and the political economy of elections should have.

Dr Michael Ndonye is a Senior Lecturer in Communication and Media at Kabarak University, Kenya. He is a public intellectual on presidential politics and elections in Kenya. He is the founding head of the Department of Mass Communication (School of Music and Media). Dr Ndonye holds a PhD in Communication and Media (Laikipia University, Kenya), a Masters in Journalism and Mass Communication, and a Bachelor of Arts (Literature, Philosophy & Economics) from Egerton University (Kenya). He is a weekly columnist with The Standard Newspaper (print and digital). He was the 2017 Governance Institute Laureate with the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), Dakar, Senegal. He has been featured on BBC, Kenya Television Network (KTN TV), MBCI TV, and Spice FM Radio talking about presidential politics—he also contributes to The Conversation. Dr Ndonye has published extensively on mass media and society.