Kenya Bans Bulk Texting During Election Season

The Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) has banned political parties in Kenya from sending mass text messages without CCK's approval. Now, political parties will have to submit the content of the text 48 hours before they want to send it in order to get it approved. The texts also have to be in either English or Swahili, not any of the many dialects used by ethnic groups in Kenya.

Why?

Kenyan girl with a cell phone

Well, 1,000 people died during post-election violence in Kenya back in 2007 and 2009. Many analysts believe that hate-filled text messages fueled the ethnic conflict and the violence, hence this banning.

Several of the political parties have reacted cautiously positive, saying that this can be a good way to limit abusive messaging. The current president, Mwai Kibaki, will be stepping down next year at the end of the second and last term and the race is certain to be close for his successor.

The CCK is doing its best to fight election violence, but they aren't the only ones. I can't give up this opportunity to mention a project that one of my students last year started called the I Am Kenyan project, which encourages unity among all Kenyans and works to end political violence at the upcoming election. You can check it out here: I Am Kenyan Project

Random Kate Thoughts: I tend to be against limiting free speech, text messages included. However, this seems to be a special circumstance where free speech was abused by political parties and people died. Considering how many emails I've gotten from the Obama and Romney camps in the last week (and last two weeks, and last month, and last year...), mass messaging is a hugely important aspect of political campaigning in the states. If the emails got hateful (well, violence-inciting racial hateful), then I think I would understand if Congress had to limit the messaging somewhat, because that communication would fall under hate speech.

Kenyan politician texting... Think that was approved? ;)