Family Values, Gender, and Sexuality in Kenya: Reflections for a research definition

Meet Vivian Ouya, a Feminist Lawyer and Co-Founder of Feminists in Kenya. She is  collaborating with a unique digital research team supported by Komons, the Kenyan Comms Hub, and Puentes. This article builds on Ngare's reflections and takes a step further in defining the research approach that guided their work. To learn more about this project, discover how Komons is driving narrative change through technology and collaboration here.

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Coming into Community  

As a feminist activist whose organizing work started and grew at the height of what has been termed the hashtag revolution, I have always been utterly conscious of the ‘side’ of the internet that I dreaded my content reach. On these daunting sides, the utterances of feminist activists were fodder for intentional misinterpretation, and the existence of LGBTQIA+ people was fictitious, or if ‘acknowledged,’ it was amidst unchecked homophobia and violence. Basically,  on those territories, if you were not a white, able-bodied, heterosexual male - you simply did not belong. Reflecting in hindsight, I now recognize this side of the internet for what it was – a brazen manifestation of a well-resourced and highly coordinated anti-rights opposition, which was enthusiastic about undermining already-attained fundamental human rights by endorsing and championing alt-right conservative ways of existence and being. For all the insidious ways that these groups have wielded and continue to reinforce violence against marginalized groups both in Kenya and globally, activists everywhere have, in powerful tandem, retained our histories of organizing, kept alive our resisting power, and continue, in different ways, to push back against the growing influence of anti-rights actors and narratives.  

It is this resilient spirit that found me in the feminist community with the Global Narrative Hive as a member of their six-month pilot cohort of narrative changemakers in East Africa. In this collective of activists, researchers, techies, artists, etc., we were interested in exploring possibilities for better worlds and building strong, supportive narrative ecosystems and connections toward this collective purpose. Amidst thought-provoking feminist conversations about misinformation and disinformation, anti-gender narratives, and embodiment of narratives, the Hive consequently invited me to join a separate core research group brought together by Komons, the Kenya Comms Hub, and Puentes - a group of communications practitioners, tech mediators, and digital researchers, interested in building narrative power.  This core research group was comprised of feminist activists, digital researchers, and communications practitioners who, like myself, were interested in answering some of the urgent questions about anti-rights groups that activists, who are deeply interested in unmasking societal hegemonies, have been interrogating. It was, therefore, a necessary and timely convergence of feminist intentions to connect with both the Hive’s and Komon’s work through research that could potentially support movements to better understand and counter anti-rights actors and narratives from a place of knowledge, evidence, and solidarity.  

Research Imaginations and Connecting the Dots  

Audre Lorde’s quote, ‘I am my best work, a series of road maps, reports, recipes, doodles and prayers from the frontlines’ absolutely resonates with me, especially when I think of the fluid nature of the preliminary research definition process. This process involved intersectional feminist imaginings, thinking, and reflecting on the research objective, outcomes, motivations, and methodologies. We undoubtedly knew we needed a roadmap, some sort of guideline, or structure to help us define and refine these categories. We co-created a structure that welcomed us into occasional physical and regular online meetings, which were curated as spaces to craft our guiding principles and commitments to each other and voice our worries and motivations about the research.

There we were, a team of researchers who had either lived through, witnessed or documented the devastating effects of anti-rights campaigns and legislations in Kenya, thinking together on shared research guidelines. It was important to us that we acknowledge and remind ourselves about these positionalities and frames to help us arrive at a version of our best work - built by roadmaps, reports, recipes, doodles, and prayers or cheers from the frontlines. 

My role in the core research group also involved holding space for the larger Hive cohort members with the intention of representing their thoughts, reflections, and feedback in the core research team. It was similarly just as important to us that we challenge traditional research methods, especially by acknowledging how people are often viewed as subjects rather than knowers of their own realities and experiences. It mattered that we curate a space to facilitate authentic engagement with the larger collective, mostly made up of marginalized groups who often bear the brunt of anti-rights narratives. It was of utmost importance that the Hive members also informed the research definition process and were involved as centres of knowledge. To put this into practice, we continue to co-facilitate bi-weekly reflection spaces meant to spark discussions about belonging - whether in families, ethnic groups, or countries - and what these ideas mean to Hive members. The idea was to find out how these identities, which are frequently very important to us, could be exploited by anti-rights actors to reinforce discrimination against marginalized groups. 

During the research design process, I also greatly enjoyed and appreciated a collective reading of the African Feminist Charter, especially the sentence, ‘Our ideological task as feminists is to understand this system (patriarchy), and our political task is to end it’ This line was our doodling moment, our brainstorming and sketching moment. How does the patriarchy (we took it a step further) – how do systems of hetero-patriarchy, white supremacy, colonialism,  neocolonialism, capitalism, and ableism work together to construct our perception of family?  How does the construction of family values within these systems shape the discourse around  LGBTQIA+ people, gender roles, feminism, and reproductive health? What is a decolonial expression of family? How have anti-rights actors weaponized the human need for belonging and group identity to shape ‘truths’ about marginalized groups? Indeed, there were so many questions and such few answers at this particular conceptualizing stage, but we were excited at the possibilities of narrowing down the research problem and scope. 

Putting pen to paper, or, in our case, fingers to keyboard, sometimes has a way of bringing elusive substantive clarity. We documented these reflections and questions within Kenya’s context through executive summaries or detailed reports that set the stage for understanding the lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ people in Kenya. This documentation process required us to bear full witness to the reality of anti-right influence in Kenya. From their influence of legislative agendas and campaigns against queer and abortion rights across Kenya to their cultivation of a dedicated disinformation ecosystem through the use of moral panic as a tactic of swaying people to act based on perceived threats to traditional identities. Our preliminary analysis spotlighted the introduction of the Family Protection Bill 2023, whose content and subsequent public discourse positioned LGBTIQ+ Kenyans as threats to family, culture, and religion. We also explored the weaponization of emotive issues such as culture, religion, and family (especially because people strongly view themselves as cultural and religious subjects)  by politicians to manufacture public consent for discriminatory laws. 

Armed with a concise point of view statement that would constantly remind us of our research  outcome - to produce evidence to know how local and international anti-rights actors exploit  misinformation about family values to institutionalize discrimination against marginalized  groups - we co-developed the following research objective: 

‘Tracing how narratives and actors associated with family values influence online  Kenyans’ discourses on sexuality, gender, and family from September 2022 to June 2024.’ 

In defining the research questions, we analyzed different digital research methods that could be relevant to meeting our research objective. To map out the anti-rights actors, we selected research methods like influencer identification that would help us identify who has influence, why, what they say, and which communities they influence. We also selected analysis of panels and agendas as a research type to help us map out which groups of people are endorsed or delegitimized by anti-rights actors. We invoked two more research types for actor mapping - framing of actors and analysis of digital strategies and tactics – to examine what is said about the anti-rights actors by different sectors and to examine the specific tactics used by anti-rights actors online.  

For narrative mapping, we included research methods like content analysis, monitoring of conversations, and mapping narratives to unpack which content has the greatest impact,  which narratives are dominant, and identify which content focuses on disinformation and hate.  

Conclusively, this process led us to the following research questions: 

Actors Mapping 

1. Which groups of actors influence online family values discourses in  Kenyan social media spaces? Why? Which communities are they a part of? 2. Who do pro-family values actors legitimize, and who do they delegitimize? How do they do it? 

3. What is said about pro-family values actors by different sectors? How are they  legitimized or delegitimized? 

4. How do different groups of pro-family values actors shape online discussions? What tactics do they use? 

Narrative Mapping 

1. How are African Family Values being discussed in Kenya across different social platforms? Specifically, what are the predominant topics of these conversations, and which issues receive the most attention? 

2. In the context of Kenya, which topics related to African Family Values are most frequently addressed on Social Media, which topics have the greatest impact, and why are these topics particularly influential or contentious? 

3. What narratives and framing techniques on social media are shaping Kenyan perceptions of African Family Values? How do people talk about African Family  Values? 

4. How are Queer communities and women framed?

Our Recipe – Introducing Velma  

What if there was a way to effectively monitor, document, and analyze anti-right actors and narratives online? What if there were methods to develop our campaigns and movement’s strategies from a place of evidence based on digital insights? We had indeed identified the research objective, but how would we locate the actual anti-rights actors and narratives online?  After all, the internet is vast, and data exists everywhere - how could we sift through this infinitely large space?  

We introduce Velma - our methodological tool and a stamp of our participation in the data revolution! And yes, it is Velma, like the intelligent, analytical, resourceful, and dependable character from the Scooby Doo franchise. Our usage of Velma recognizes that the internet has created alternative civic spaces for political action and resistance, allowing people to exercise voice and agency and even counter the state’s monopoly on information. Velma is an open-source digital analysis platform developed by Komons in 2023 to increase the digital analysis capabilities of narrative changemakers.  

With Velma, we can swiftly explore and analyze digital data to map anti-right actors, their patterns, narratives, and tactics. Velma also has analytical tools that would allow us to deepen our analysis of the niche topics covered by anti-rights actors, monitor their conversations in real-time, and discover their connected ecosystems. This is groundbreaking and necessary 

given the Western-based funding of anti-rights actors in the majority (Global South) countries. It is also remarkably useful that Velma can capture the necessary data even when prompted in  Swahili. This capability contests the colonial languages' hegemony on digital platforms and helps activists gain an even deeper understanding of anti-rights narratives, considering the widespread use of slang in anti-rights online discourses in Kenya. As we continue to engage  Velma’s functionalities during this research, we see its utilization as revolutionary for activists, especially because its insights could potentially be used to examine important sociological questions, including the augmentation of disinformation on digital platforms.  Velma’s insights are also potentially helpful in shaping and influencing anti-discrimination campaigns and policies. Further, we also see the very creation of this evidence through Velma as an epistemic win for activists in majority countries as we continue to centre knowledge created for us and by us.  

Concluding Reflections 

We see, live, and experience the growing influence of anti-rights actors on digital platforms.  We also bear witness to the regression of rights based on these narratives. Despite this, we are not passive in the face of oppression. We continue to use our power to push back,  organize, and create knowledge to inform our collective strategies. We have reclaimed digital spaces, are using our collective voices, and continue to activate our communities for political action. Even though this research is still a work in progress, it augments itself as part of this collective resilience and creates collective knowledge to support communities in the narrative change-making ecosystem while providing long-term preparedness in countering anti-rights.  We see this research as an archive of memory and knowledge, a living document that can help build sustained narrative change movements and feed into cross-movement organizing work.