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The 2005 Referendum provided an example of how the media sets public agenda.

The pilot study conducted earlier revealed that during the period that preceded the 2005 Referendum, discussions in coffee houses, churches and other public places focused mainly on the content of the Draft Constitution and whether it was beneficial to the people or not. These discussions were held by people who could be regarded as opinion leaders, such as teachers, the clergy, lawyers and journalists. This discourse revolved mainly around the Draft Constitution, and more specifically on the distribution of powers in the executive arm of the Kenyan government, land issues, and devolution of government. These issues constituted discussions and were initially gleaned from the media, which set the agenda for public discussion.

The Draft Constitution had a clause which proposed the office of Prime Minister to have no executive powers. This formed the thrust of the arguments as people discussed the suitability of such a system. This clause sparked debate as to whether a non-executive prime minister would be ideal for the country or whether a titular President and an executive Prime Minister would be better. The discussions in the public domain also dwelt on which politician was best suited to hold which position. Arguably, the media were critical in setting the agenda on the new constitution in the public domain. What then is agenda setting? This is defined as the ability of the media to influence the public‟s perception of important topics and issues of the day (Walgrave, 2004; Simon 1980). The media‟s ability to influence public discussions is critical in this study which seeks to correlate the relationship between the media content and the public agenda through the two steps flow system of transmission. This linkage is arguably further influenced by

Media and Political Conflicts Page 112 the kind of news and commentary frames that are adopted by the two newspapers sampled for this study.

According to Okolo (1994, 34), “The mass media reports the society to itself, and based on the reports, the society critically looks at itself and fashions out new ways of life while consolidating the old accepted ways.” This theory discusses how the media depicts news, what people talk about, and what they think about. The theoretical rationale for agenda setting postulates a direct effect of the media in creating the public agenda. In terms of specific issues such as political campaigns, on which agenda setting studies have concentrated to date, there is a possibility that there could be actual effects of the media on their audience, albeit through various intermediaries such as opinion leaders.

The 2005 Referendum on the Draft Constitution showed the influence of the media in the public sphere. The campaigns were conducted in the media. The media highlighted specific issues such as the fact that the draft constitution was drafted by the Attorney General of Kenya at the instigation of the President in exclusion of the other protagonists who were in favour of the alternative Bomas Draft which had earlier been drafted by delegates drawn from all over Kenya. The reports carried in these articles ultimately impacted on people‟s attitude to the Draft Constitution. The process of highlighting specific issues in the media, and thus turning them into public topics at a specific time, is termed by the media

“agenda setting”. People soon took up active debate on such media articles.

Severin and Tankard (1992) define agenda setting as an idea that the news media, by their display of news, come to determine the issues that the public thinks and talks about, for instance in Bunges in the countryside and towns. These Bunges are forums where people discuss what they have read in the newspapers and the implication of such articles.

A number of issues on the Draft Constitution were highlighted, and they eventually caused or led to a specific positive or negative predisposition towards the Draft Constitution. Amongst the issues highlighted, were that the land would be controlled by the central government, and the Presidency would maintain its immense powers. The Draft Constitution was also depicted as being a document

Media and Political Conflicts Page 113 that was promoted by some tribes. It could be argued that some of these issues that were played out in the public sphere could have contributed to the overwhelming rejection of the draft constitution in seven provinces and supported only in the Central province, which was dominated by the Kikuyu ethnic group.

Manheim (1987) proposes that agenda setting involves the interaction of three agendas, namely, the media agenda which originates from media owners and editors who influence newspaper content, the public agenda where the opinion leaders from all strata of life such as the teachers and the clergy probably contribute to people‟s attitudes and actions, and a public agenda which is driven by the executive arm of government. The three elements impact on one another because each of them has its basis in the general public.

This theory is certainly very central to the study of media effects, as Dearing and Rogers (1996, 15) point out that “agenda setting is related to several other kinds of effects including the bandwagon effect, the spiral of silence, diffusion of news, and media gate keeping”. Therefore, the theory explains how the media impact on people in a liberal democratic situation. The media function in this case engages the citizenry in discourse which is used to keep them informed and allows them to make informed choices in a liberal democracy.

Sunday (2007), Sheufele and Tewskbury (2007) among others argue that the mass media compel attention to be given to certain issues. They reason that the media tend to build public images of political figures by means of various newspaper headlines which seem to guide public discourse. The Bunges are a case in point. These forums mainly provide points of discussion and also follow closely on the content of the newspapers. The media constantly present objects, suggesting what individuals in the general public should think about, know about, and finally have feelings and make opinions about, as in a liberal democracy where the people‟s freedom to contribute to debates is cardinal to the very success of the system.

Sheafer and Weimann (2005) posit that the mass media influence public opinion by emphasizing certain issues over others. The amount of media attention or the

Media and Political Conflicts Page 114 importance devoted to certain issues influences the degree of public concern for these issues. The media give legality and currency to issues. Such a standpoint is reflected by how the media reported the constitution-making process which was flawed as it did not allow for citizenry participation (Daily Nation, 1 November 2005).

Lippman (1922) argues that the world is too complicated and out of reach, and consequently we should rely on the media to understand it. The media use their reach, which is beyond any individual, to inform their audience in the manner, and with the arrangement of information, that they deem fit. The newspapers under study focused on issues of the draft constitution, such as a devolved government, two tier governments, land rights, and a non-executive Prime Minister. Studies which have been conducted on agenda setting have focused on media content and public issues, and their ranking in the public domain. Amongst those who have conducted various studies on agenda building and setting, are McCombs and Show (1972) and Funkhouser (1973). Each of them envisioned a functional information system in a liberal democracy which requires the citizenry to make informed decisions and dialogue amongst themselves.

Scheufele and Tewksbury (2007, 14) observe that “the traditional agenda-setting approach is based on memory-based models of information processing and [is]

therefore an accessibility model”. Agenda-setting effects thus assume that the entire realm of media effects depends on the extent to which the audience can access the media. Thus, it is not information about the issue that produces the effect; rather, it is the fact that the issue has received a certain amount of processing time and attention that carries the effect.

Dearing and Rogers (1996, 2) point out that “agenda building concentrates on two major independent variables which affect real-world conditions, and events such as the Referendum of 2005 in Kenya” in addition the activities of different political actors who adopted opposing views on the draft constitution constituted the national public agenda on constitutional issues. The media depict an agenda that is reflective of their own media agenda before they influence the audience. An

Media and Political Conflicts Page 115 example is the perceived agenda of the East African Standard which was openly against the Draft Constitution, as was found in the pilot study.

3.2.4 Priming

This theory articulates how the mass media influence ”the standards by which governments, presidents, approaches, and candidates for public office are judged by making some issues more salient than others” (Lyengar and Kinder, 1987) A number of studies have demonstrated that there is a dimension of powerful media effects that goes beyond agenda setting. These studies include that of Elizabeth Noelle Neuman (1974) who undertook studies on the spiral of silence, which showed how powerful the media are in silencing the minority. The majority view tends to triumph over the minority view, according to Noelle Neuman‟s theory of the spiral of silence, and by extension the media‟s power and effects on its audience.

Lyengar and Kinder (1987) has identified this aspect as the “priming effect”. Priming entails “the processes through which the media attend to some issues and ignore others and thereby alter the standards by which people evaluate election of candidates” (Severin and Tankard, 1997, 258). The theory is based on the postulation that people do not have intricate knowledge about political topics and do not take into account everything they do know when making political decisions – they must consider what more readily comes to mind. What readily came to mind in the case of these researches were themes such as executive/ separation of powers, violence, devolution, leaders‟ utterances, land /inheritance, process of constitution making, ethnicity, political conflict, provincial administration, legislature, and the Bill of Rights which were highlighted by the mass media.

The media can draw attention to some aspects of politics such as the referendum themes at the expense of other issues in the political sphere at the time. This is illustrated by the famed memorandum of understanding which was signed between the then-Presidential candidates Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga, which was not implemented. The media might thus help to set the terms through which political judgments are reached, including evaluations of political figures (Alger,

Media and Political Conflicts Page 116 1989). The memorandum of understanding constituted how members of the National Rainbow Coalition were meant to share power. In this research, the media‟s role in priming specific thematic issues elaborated above becomes clear when analyzing how the media covered the referendum campaigns.

Priming is important in this study since the theory attempts to evaluate political attitudes that occur as a result of mass media messages. Scheufele and Tewksbury (2007) state that priming occurs when news content suggests to news audiences that they ought to use specific issues as benchmarks for evaluating the performance of leaders and governments. Most newspapers such as the Nation and the East African Standard tend to present opinion pieces that discuss what they perceive to be the best way of governance or what kind of constitution could serve the country best. In the process, priming takes place. It can be argued that priming is a temporal extension of agenda setting, since it deals with setting what people discuss and how they discuss the issues in the public sphere.