Internet service providers were requested to cooperate as the Commission deemed this step necessary due to a continued rise in cybercrime (Privacy International, 2017). In late 2016 the Communication Authority (CA) (the governmental regulatory body of Kenya’s communication sector) finalized a contract with a private Israeli web intelligence company webintPro to use their software in future projects (Rubinstein, 2019). There remains some hope for privacy, as the High Court of Kenya ruled a Device Management System to access mobile subscriber data directly unconstitutional in April 2018 (High Court of Kenya, 2018). Table 1: Organizational Form and Prevalence of Social Media Manipulation in Kenya Initial Government Politicians Private Contractors Civil Society Citizens & Report Agencies & Parties Organizations Influencers Military/ Jubilee PR/Social media Bloggers Intelligence ODM insight companies Source: Authors’ evaluations based on data collected. Blank spaces indicate no evidence was found. Strategies, Tools, and Techniques According to a GeoPoll survey conducted in May 2017, 90% of Kenyans reported they had encountered false information regarding the 2017 election, 87% of whom reported the information as deliberately false. Social media consistently ranked lower than mainstream media on trust (Elliott, 2017). On Twitter, content was spread with two core hashtags: #ElectionsKE and #ElectionsKE2017. Social media has been used in a quite strategic manner by Kenyan politicians, who have used both social media influencers with large followings as well as bots to amplify their messages and trend hashtags (BBC News, 2017; Otieno, 2019; Wright, 2018). In general, it seems Kenya is not working on psyops operations fighting propaganda as other African countries (e.g. Nigeria) allegedly are, with such operations having become more widespread to fight IS and Al-Shabaab (Anzalone, 2020; Mutambo, 2019). The only information controlling measures the Kenyan military and intelligence have been accused of are spying on journalists, political actors and activists as well as pressuring them in an effort to control public news narratives at times (Freedom House, 2018b). It appears that the authorities’ standard strategy for dealing with news agencies or activists posting information or organizing events which do not sit well with the government is to accuse them of spreading hate speech, rumours and propaganda. In light of the government’s tendency to accuse activists or news organizations of spreading rumours and propaganda, several groups, including Freedom House and the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, have criticized the Computer Misuse and Cybercrime Act which passed into legislation in May 2018 for repressing online liberties even further (Freedom House, 2018a). The act imposes up to 10 years of prison and hefty fines for the publication of “false” or “fictitious” information that results in “panic” or is “likely to discredit the reputation of a person” (“Kenya President Signs Controversial Social Media Bill into Law”, 2018). In June 2018, the Bloggers Association of Kenya successfully petitioned some of the provisions of the law, which was suspended while awaiting further decision by the High Court of Kenya. On 20 February 2020 the Court declared the law constitutional (Itimu, 2020). 228