People Speaking Back? Media, Empowerment and Democracy in East Africa (MEDIeA)

project summary

MEDIeA’s analytical challenge is to understand the ways and means in which youth as ordinary citizens engage with civil society driven media and communication platforms and what socio-cultural and political outcomes this may have. The core inquiry of MEDIeA grows from a concern about how young people in Kenya and Tanzania, young women in particular, are secured a role in both the local, national and regional development processes they belong to and, ideally, should be centrally placed within. What opportunities are there for ordinary citizens to voice their opinions and engage both in policy development as well as in the process of critique and holding their governments accountable? The overall objective of MEDIeA is to explore the role civil society driven media and communication technologies and platforms potentially can have in enhancing participatory governance processes in East Africa, particularly in Kenya and Tanzania. MEDIeA is case-study based, with 6 participating research projects. The projects examine a number of development initiatives involving youth in Tanzania and Kenya. Of MEDIeA’s 6 sub-projects three are empirically grounded in Kenya and three in Tanzania. In addition to the overall objective being the red thread throughout all sub-projects, six intermediate objectives will guide the research: 1) What is the current situation of youth, particularly marginalized female youth, vis-à-vis the development challenge of the country, and how does government, media and civil society act in response to the youth situation?, 2) How do youth experience, make use of and engage with civil society driven media and communication platforms (be they analogue or digital)? 3) What do these media and communication platforms do/produce, and how socially inclusive are the production processes? 4) What mechanisms are developed to hold governments accountable and transparent? (what advocacy strategies do the involved civil society organisations have, if any), 5) How do the civil society organisations ensure their own legitimacy and accountability to the groups of citizens the advocate on behalf of? and, 6) How is the legitimacy and accountability of the selected NGOs/CSOs experienced at community level?