Youth, Digital Communication and National Security in Kenya

The Gen-Z Protests (2024–2025)

Abstract

This paper explores the intersection of digital communication, youth activism and national security, drawing on the case of the 2024/2025 Gen-Z protests in Kenya. Beginning with protests against the Finance Bill 2024, these protests quickly became the most widespread youth mobilization and protest in Kenyan history since the early 1900s. Social media platforms served as mobilization venues on one side and contest venues on the other. The research builds on the theory of securitization and the notion of networked publics to construct a Digital Securitization Cascade, aiming to understand how viral online communication both inflates and limits states’ responses to dissent. The methodological approach involves a convergent mixed-methods design, combining computational social science and qualitative methods, including network analysis and cross-platform content time-series modelling, with critical discourse analysis of government statements, media attention and 25 semi-structured interviews with activists, journalists, and policymakers. Results indicate that surges in online presence were powerful predictors of securitizing rhetoric by state actors, and viral transmission of visual representations of police violence created international suspicion, which softened coercive state strategies. At the same time, misinformation and disinformation also made it difficult to trust any side of the protesters or the government, provoking further conflict online. It contributes in 3 ways: theoretically, the study is a reconceptualization of securitization as a digitally networked public contest into a large-scale form of mobilization; empirically, the study presents a rare example of a large-scale mobilization of youth in East Africa; and methodologically, the study is a multimodal approach to the study of protest communication in the Global South. The article concludes by offering policy recommendations on the governance of platforms, transparency in the security sector and youth empowerment in democratic processes.