Social media and political campaigns in Kenya: Testing inter-media agenda setting relationship between Twitter and the Daily Nation newspaper in the 2017 elections.

Abstract

This study investigates inter-media agenda setting in the micro-blogging platform, Twitter, and the leading newspaper in Kenya, Daily Nation through quantitative research. Content analysis of Twitter news corpus (n = 10,000) and Daily Nation news articles (n = 783) found that there was a positive correlation between news discussion on Twitter and in the newspaper (p < 0.05). Regression analysis showed a reciprocal relationship with both Twitter and Daily Nation newspaper influencing the agenda between each other. Other insights drawn from this study show that the opposition party set the agenda for discussion by ruling party Jubilee during the campaigns.