It is estimated that there are currently 170 million bloggers thanks to rapidly expanding internet universes and about 340 million blog readers worldwide.

Public fora in the 1980s and 90s was virtually inexistent thanks to the Moi governments intolerance.

 While political debate and discussion have never really picked up since then, they’ve since found a new outlet; the internet. Online forums, mailing lists and social networks are the new public kamukunji’s. They have allowed for the articulation of rage, discussion of matters private and public, dissemination of information and are also vital mobilization forums. Among the most popular in the country are Bidii Afrika, Young Professionals, Facebook, KPTJ, Kictanet, Pambazuka, Kumekucha, Kenya Talk, NYCIV and Africa op-ed. The activist blogs are such as Marsgroup and Sukuma Kenya. The monopoly journalists once had on political discourse has been broken.

It’s not in Kenya alone. Moldovan protesters used Twitter to organize mass protests against the communist government win in April this year. Supporters of Iranian opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi also used their phones, facebook, twitter and email to mobilize each other, send out messages and images to the outside world when the government shut down international media and non-government media, just as bloggers in Kenya held fort with news updates when live media had been banned during the Post Election Violence period.

In addition to news and information, activism has also gone online. The internet is now key in fundraising, lobbying, volunteering, community building, e-petitioning and organizing. Internet activists also pass on e-petitions to be emailed to the government and organizations for policy change and protest.

An e-petition was launched in February this year when three human rights activists Philo Ikonya, Chrispus Fwamba and Patrick Kamotho were arrested outside parliament and beaten while in police custody. These are all components of e-democracy which proponents hope to use to make processes more accessible, make citizen participation in policy decision making more expansive and participatory. The internet in this way can ensure transparency and accountability and keep the government closer to the people and thus promote democratic practice. This would mark a shift in governance in Africa were it not for the fact that most African citizens are not online as they have no access to computers and electricity.

In the USA the government and its agents follow citizens to monitor satisfaction with services they receive. In some states, interested people receive daily tweets of the state’s cash flow from the city treasurer from twitter. The internet has also become an alternative political campaigning tool, going on social networks to reach a younger audience as Barrack Obama’s campaign did.  openforum.com.au, an Australian non-profit eDemocracy project which invites politicians, senior public servants, academics, business people and other key stakeholders to engage in high-level policy debate also exemplifies this. Globally, online media is big. Currently 170 million bloggers exist thanks to rapidly expanding internet universes in the emerging internet markets with an estimated 340 million blog readers worldwide. Blogs are particularly big in China where they are believed to be the first form of self expression for the masses that has ever existed.

On the flip side of all this though, this online media can stoke ethnicity and flout ethics, defaming otherwise innocent people. Vitriolic arguments were seen on sites such as Kumekucha before and after the 2007 general election. The adverse power of online communications is so big that online reputation management is becoming an industry in itself with companies existing to watch out and counter bad publicity steadily growing.

Organizing has also gone online with local social groups and entertainers moving online to mobilize audiences. And some of the online groups are in such large numbers that cannot be ignored. With reporting on the election and violence going on online when all other fronts had been banned, and violently tribal debate on the internet almost a forewarning of the actual violence that will occur, the internet is the new national barometer of how things will be. It played a part towards the referendum and the national elections. It cannot be ignored in 2012. Already, numerous politicians are active on social networks. The internet will be the place to watch as the country moves towards 2012.

Defamation and libel suits might feature more in the coming years as more and more people go online and communicate ignorant of their actions. Worse is that one could be sued as the owner of a site in which others have made defamatory comments hiding behind screen names. Screen names are not wholly protective in shielding identity though, computer logs and records can often reveal the names of Internet users. Internet service providers such as Yahoo! have policies that allow them to reveal the identities of their users when the service provider is ordered to by a court. There is still much debate on anonymous libel on the internet. In the USA, the law shields website owners from defamation claims where someone else has posted libelous material. Australia is seen as fairly repressive on its internet communication laws. Journalism lecturer Wambui Wamunyu says that online journalism is still a grey area in Kenya citing the question of jurisdiction if one is writing from another country and the complication involved in following an anonymous blogger or commenter. “It’s such nebulous territory that goes so far and regulation is still too small. We haven’t begun to address the implications on journalism at all; we are still operating in the traditional mould.”