Gen Z, Millennials, technology and the Nairobi protests

Gen Z, Millennials, technology and the Nairobi protests
Following a tumultuous – and violent – series of days in Kenya, President Ruto has reversed his decision on tax hikes that sparked unrest in the streets. The situation has been extremely dire – with law enforcement resorting to tear gas and firearms. Amnesty International, in collaboration with local civic groups in Kenya, has documented a minimum of five fatalities from gunshot wounds and over thirty individuals sustaining injuries. The turmoil primarily took place in the capital city of Nairobi but has also extended to other urban areas across the nation. This protest largely resonated with the Gen-Z demographic, who before seemed unlikely to vote – prompting an examination of the influence of social media. Wairimu Gitahi joins us from Nairobi to delve into this matter further.

Will cheapfakes lead to President Biden’s downfall?
Following, what some commentators are describing as a disastrous presidential debate for Joe Biden, could a low tech misinformation campaign help secure a Trump victory? Misinformation comes in many forms online, but most of us would assume high-level tech would be behind major election interference. However, in the US elections it appears that cheapfakes are becoming increasingly popular. Bhaskar Chakravorti, Dean of Global Business at The Fletcher School, Tufts University explains how Trump supporters don’t need AI or fancy tech to make Biden look frail and weak.

The programme is presented by Gareth Mitchell and the studio expert is Wairimu Gitahi.

More on this week's stories:
Kenya unrest: Deep economic roots that brought Gen-Z onto streets
White house says Joe-Biden is a victim of ‘cheap fakes’: What are they?

Chapters

• 2:30 Tech, Gen Z and the Nairobi Protests
• 12:01 Cheapfakes in the US election campaign

Transcript

00:00:00 Gareth Mitchell 

Hello, everybody. Welcome back. This is Somewhere on Earth and it's Tuesday the 2nd of July 2024. I'm Gareth here in London and we have voices today from Nairobi and the United States. 

00:00:21 Gareth Mitchell 

And with us today for some experting is Wairimu Gitahi in Nairobi. Hello Wairimu. 

00:00:27 Wairimu Gitahi 

Hello. Hello, Gareth. Hello, Bhaskar. So great to be here. Thank you so much. 

00:00:32 Gareth Mitchell 

Greetings. That's right. Because we also have Bhaskar Chakravorti. He'll be joining us in the show as well. So we were all together. This is all lovely. So do you have any kind of gossip for us at all Wairimu since I've last seen you? Obviously, I know that a lot's been going on in Nairobi, for instance, which we will get into in the podcast. But just in life, the universe, anything. Any questions, comments or confessions at this. 

00:00:54 Wairimu Gitahi 

To be honest, my only confession, and we'll talk about it more, is that I didn't realize how powerful Gen Z’s were in Nairobi. They have actually stopped the whole financial bill in this country using technology mainly. So I'm very impressed by that. We'll talk more about that. 

00:01:09 Gareth Mitchell 

That is significant, which is going to form the theme for at least the first half of this podcast, and I think it will be a recurring one as well. So let's jump in. 

00:01:21 Gareth Mitchell 

And coming up today. 

00:01:26 Gareth Mitchell 

Lot of social media to discuss. There's been violent unrest in Kenya over proposed tax hikes. So one question today really is has the aforementioned Gen Z been coordinating the violence through social media? Now, obviously, I don't mean the whole of Gen Z, but maybe a section of it, or maybe this wasn't coordinated. Maybe they actually had nothing to do with it, but just communicated their disquiet over social media and other events took their course. We shall see.  

00:01:55 Gareth Mitchell 

At the other end of the age spectrum from Gen Z is U.S. President Joe Biden. Yes, in the midst of the U.S. election campaign, who needs deep fakes when the reality for the president is often not really that flattering. But it seems there still is plenty of scope for malicious editing and other trickery to portray Biden in an unsympathetic light. We'll discuss all that right here on the Somewhere on Earth podcast. 

00:02:30 Gareth Mitchell 

Right first, then, after a chaotic and bloody few days in Kenya, President Ruto has changed his mind on the tax hikes that had led to violence on the streets. Ruto says he'll withdraw his controversial finance bill and increase borrowing. Instead, things have been very nasty indeed, with police firing tear gas and guns. 

00:02:50 Gareth Mitchell 

Amnesty International, partnering with civic organizations in Kenya, reports at least five people dead from gunshot wounds and more than thirty others injured. The unrest was centered on the capital, Nairobi, but it has spread to other cities in the country as well. 

00:03:05 Gareth Mitchell 

Well, this was very much a Gen Z protest it seems. So what role has social media played? Well, Wairimu let's get into all this and I suppose we should at least begin by defining what Generation Z, or Generation Z, as I might say in my English English as I described, we better define what we mean by this generation. What kind of age group are they? 

00:03:28 Wairimu Gitahi 

Yeah, Gareth, so yeah, Gen Z's are of course mainly people who were born from the mid-nineties to the very early 2000s, like up to like 2012, so pretty not so young, but still very young and capable of doing a lot of things as we, as we'll see as we discuss. 

00:03:48 Gareth Mitchell 

Yeah. What? It seems yeah, having a lot of power in Kenya. And we should just put into context a bit about what's been going on there. So President Ruto has been or had been trying to put through this finance bill, wasn't it? That would see tax increases, would these have been across the board? Were they especially focused and and targeted on young people? 

00:04:08 Wairimu Gitahi 

Yeah. OK. So just to bring a little bit of context and perspective. It was a, it was the proposed financial bill. So the idea that so the, the the MP's are the ones who I mean who said yes to it. And so after that as usual when the Members of Parliament say yes to a bill, then it assents to the presidents, for the President to put on a signature and make it law. 

00:04:31 Wairimu Gitahi 

So there was a lot of push. Particularly through this generation and also millennial millennials to some extent to try and stop even the Members of Parliament from saying a majority yes to this bill. So one would have assumed with so much push on digital media, the protests, which I I would say let let us call them protests, not really riots. Because riots were just came about through some hooligans or people who wanted to distract the whole process. 

00:05:00 Wairimu Gitahi 

And one would have assumed with all that push, even from politicians as well, and human rights organizations and various other associations and organizations, one would have, one would have assumed that the MP's would have voted a majority no, but they didn't.  

00:05:20 Wairimu Gitahi 

So when they deemed the the protests became even more severe. And that's where, for example, the the people who are protesting outside Parliament, I guess also those who are who are not really part of the protest but wanted to cause violence, 

00:05:37 Wairimu Gitahi 

stomped into Parliament. And this is the first time something like that is happening, of course in this country. So it's been quite some very serious protests. And what is interesting is that I think many people did not assume that the Gen Z's would be able to make such a a strong, strong, strong, pass such a strong message about what they want. 

00:06:00 Wairimu Gitahi 

Because usually they are just seen as keyboard warriors, as you would call them. But it does stand out that they are actually, they are also quite action oriented. 

00:06:08 Gareth Mitchell 

Yeah, as in getting out onto the streets and and you're right that these we you know we had we better not call them riots. And in fact they they weren't riots apart from as you say, some violence that had been orchestrated by proper hooligans. 

00:06:21 Gareth Mitchell 

So yeah, certainly in my introduction I said words like protest and unrest rather than riot, and the language around this is so important, especially at these kind of heightened times. So can you give a sense then of why everyone's pointing at Gen Z specifically? And I suppose what I'm fishing around for there, is this a combination of what people have seen online from that generation, and maybe another question is if so, how do we know it's that generation? 

00:06:48 Gareth Mitchell 

And then also, the protests on the street. Were they, was it pretty evidently younger people out protesting on the streets. So perhaps give us a sense of how it breaks down,  social media versus the streets or a bit of both. 

00:07:00 Wairimu Gitahi 

Yeah, I think it's first of all, such an such an such an important and interesting question, Gareth. Because you usually when there are protests against the government or whatever is happening in the country, first of all, we have the politicians particularly like the opposition side, the opposition leader, leading protests in the streets. 

00:07:19 Wairimu Gitahi 

He's the one you know, sort of like, you know, urging people to go to the streets and demonstrate. This time we didn't see that, it was not something that was led by politicians, although some people still say that the politicians are paying the young people to go to the streets. But visually, physically out in the streets, we are seeing very young people, 27 year olds. It's obvious, they're very young people in the streets and people that we usually don't  

00:07:47 Wairimu Gitahi 

expect to have any reaction about any policy or any law or any bill that is that that is being discussed in the country, because even some politicians were kind of saying oh these young people just want followers on TikTok and so on.  

00:08:06 Wairimu Gitahi 

But if you look carefully, for example in Instagram, in TikTok you will see from very earlier on, even before the MP's passed this bill that there were posters being being being being pushed, sponsored. You'll see musicians, artists, or they’re pushing people to go and protest against it? There were people commenting, artists doing some, you know, singing rap poetry, all that. So it was very, very evident from social media platforms that these protests were very successful because of that push. 

00:08:48 Gareth Mitchell 

Would we say that this action on social media, was it orchestrated? Did it seem or was this fairly organic? 

00:08:55 Wairimu Gitahi 

You see, it's very difficult at this point to tell who is the leader. But there are pockets of like, more pronounced activists that you will see when they post, than there is, that there's much more reaction to what they say. So at the moment it's not very clear if there is a specific leader, but they're just like pockets of groups being organised by a number of people. 

00:09:19 Gareth Mitchell 

How much of a wake up call do you think this has been to people in Kenya, especially the ruling class there? 

00:09:24 Wairimu Gitahi 

Whoa. We are so surprised you know. Many people are very, very surprised by this action because if, as I said earlier, the whole notion, and I think it's in the also other parts of the country of seeing this generation group, like, people who don't care about politics. Some even comparing them to people like middle class who just say things, but they won't wake up on the day of, let's say, voting or elections to go and vote. 

00:09:51 Wairimu Gitahi 

But this time we've seen there's a very big I mean there, there's a very big part of this generation that wants change and also they're not scared. I mean, many of them have been killed in the streets you know. The police start to using live bullets and and and many people, I mean, have been very, very shocked by why would they use live bullets. The government right now also also I mean released you could say the military on the streets, 

00:10:20 Wairimu Gitahi 

because they said that the police were overpowered or which many people, including myself, are are not very much in agreement with that. I think that is going too far, but it also just shows what impact the Gen Z have made and what impact that is having having in even how the government is reacting. 

00:10:40 Gareth Mitchell 

Yeah. And the Gen Z's armed with social media, even though this was action on the streets. But I I'm inferring that the action from the streets was very likely to have become about because or being certainly being aided by communication through social media. 

00:10:57 Wairimu Gitahi 

Yes, because what's happening like also even today, there were protests yeah. Like this week, they have already announced to us on Tuesday and Thursday there will be protests, so their posters are being circulated on social media, videos being captured and of course circulated as well on social media. 

00:11:14 Wairimu Gitahi 

To even tell people what they should wear, which color, what they should carry like, like a mask, a water, wear sneakers, wear black or whatever. So like every information is being passed through that through social media and also through WhatsApp, which is a medium that is very much used in this country. 

00:11:33 Wairimu Gitahi 

So it's it's very, very well orchestrated. Like you know what to do. Uh, there are certain,  there's certain information about where to meet. And if you check the people who are posting them, obviously they're from this generation or at least people who have a lot of influence on this generation and that's why, for example, I was mentioning people like artists, who this generation looks up to very much. 

00:11:57 Gareth Mitchell 

All right. So we'll leave it there for now. Thank you, Wairimu.  

Well now on the US mainstream media and social media, we've seen clips being shared of President Biden looking frail and being generally incoherent in the now infamous CNN presidential debate. 

00:12:13 Gareth Mitchell 

Well, given that these are of the actual things that happened, just imagine what the deep fakes look like. Biden and his campaign have been bearing the brunt of an hourly onslaught of videos of Biden looking confused, wandering off, and otherwise just not really looking with it. Now sure, the reality isn't always that great, and Biden is a pretty old man, but a whole load of the material doing the rounds is faked and or edited out of context. 

00:12:39 Gareth Mitchell 

Well, our friend Bhaskar Chakravorti, Dean of global business at the Fletcher School at Tufts University has been speaking to the New York Times about all this. And well  you’re are speaking to us now. Always nice to have you back on. How are you? Nice to see you, Bhaskar. 

00:12:53 Bhaskar Chakravorti 

Good to hear your voice, Gareth, and good to be back on the programme. 

00:12:56 Gareth Mitchell 

Absolutely. So let's hear about some of the material that's been doing the rounds of Biden because in one of them, for instance, he appears to wander off during a G7 gathering, doesn't he? What was going on in that video? 

00:13:11 Bhaskar Chakravorti 

Yeah. So the, depending on which version of the video you saw, Biden seemed to be wandering away from the other G7 leaders. But if you saw a different version with a wider frame, you could see that he was actually moving towards a paratrooper who had just landed after you know, a a nice show that they were doing for the world leaders and he was basically waving and speaking to that person. So it's all about the frame. 

00:13:42 Bhaskar Chakravorti 

And it's all about context. We keep coming back to context. So this video among so many others, didn't require any sophisticated technology, didn't require AI, it just required somebody with a pair of digital scissors to just snip and cut just at the right time and a perfectly normal picture can start looking abnormal when it is devoid of context. 

00:14:07 Gareth Mitchell 

So more of a cheap fake than a deep fake by the sound of it.  

00:14:09 Bhaskar Chakravorti 

Exactly. 

00:14:10 Gareth Mitchell 

And I suppose cropping the image in that way when the action was going on on the right hand side of the frame. As you say there was this paratrooper there and and Biden's just being a good guy, just going over to engage with this, this person who's put on a display, and Biden presumably wants to thank him for it or to reflect him in some way. 

00:14:27 Gareth Mitchell 

But of course cropping that had the effect, obviously, of making Biden look as if he was just wandering off, just talking to fresh air. But it also just so happened to fit particularly well with the aspect ratio in portrait that you'd have on a mobile phone video rather than a more wider screen that you'd have on a say on your TV. 

00:14:46 Bhaskar Chakravorti 

Absolutely, absolutely. And then, of course, Biden's physical appearance isn't the greatest. As you noted, he is, you know, getting old. He is old, and his gait is stiff, and everything about him, you know, looks feeble. And even with the context he doesn't look like he's in terrific shape. And of course, in the CNN debate that you noted earlier, he looked awful. 

00:15:15 Gareth Mitchell 

Yeah, well, that was the thing. And of course that was no deep or cheap fake. It was real telly and he clearly wasn't having a good evening. And and in fact, we've just been talking about the the New York Times that's done a piece about this, and you were interviewed for that piece, but wasn't it the New York Times itself that has been leading the charge, really to say it's time for Biden to go. 

00:15:33 Bhaskar Chakravorti 

Yeah, uh, well, the New York Times, along with practically every other newspaper.Uh, certainly. Uh, uh, the the centre and centre of left of center newspapers, pretty much every editorial every columnist has been calling for Biden to step down. 

00:15:50 Gareth Mitchell 

Sure. So so it is important to point out that yes, the actual live TV pictures from CNN did show an elderly man who was evidently struggling in quite a a lot of it, but backed, I suppose, to the videos that are then embellishing and taking maybe Biden on a good day and making him look awful.  

00:16:10 Gareth Mitchell 

Another example was for the the D-Day event wasn't it. There was, I saw these videos on the round and it just looks as if Biden's struggling to sit down. It's really uncomfortable to watch, and I think Jill Biden's trying to help him wasn't she, what was going on there. 

00:16:23 Bhaskar Chakravorti 

So what was going on there was, I guess, a portion of the ceremony had just concluded or was moving to the next phase. Naturally, it was time for people to sit down. People on the podium to sit down. So Biden started, you know, sitting down and maybe Jill Biden, and of course, you know, we couldn't hear, was telling him he needed to stay standing for a bit more. 

00:16:49 Bhaskar Chakravorti 

And basically the video cut out right there. But if you watch a longer version of the video, you can see that a few seconds later, indeed Biden does sit down on a chair. So that initial edited video you couldn't see the chair. So it seemed like Biden was just sitting or trying to sit in mid air. And that, of course doesn't look very good for the leader of the free world. 

00:17:12 Gareth Mitchell 

Yeah, well, true and especially my viewing of that video is that he was simply he, he thought everyone was about to sit down and then people weren't quite sitting down at that point. And he was just politely just waiting to look around to make sure that he wasn't sitting down too early. And then everyone else sat down. So he did.  

00:17:28 Gareth Mitchell 

So, anyway, long conversation about a man sitting down, but very important, and it did the rounds and it's all part of this story. And I suppose a technology story here on Somewhere on Earth about the use of social media. And I'm interested Bhaskar in the people who have or the campaign teams who have been sharing these videos, and indeed, doing some of this dodgy editing. 

00:17:52 Bhaskar Chakravorti 

Yeah. And of course, you know, this is not a monopoly on, you know, for the the the right leaning social media people alone because the Biden team has also been sharing, uh, you know, cheap fakes or or, you know, the equivalents of Donald Trump looking confused, looking lost and wandering off and basically waving to, you know, an empty spot. So it's and this kind of stuff is easy to put out and it's, you know, requires no technology at all. So now we're seeing kind of the tip for tat, you know, cheap fake war as it were. 

00:18:30 Gareth Mitchell 

Wouldn't it be lovely if a bit more of it was about the issues and the politics and the things that matter in people's lives rather than this? 

00:18:38 Bhaskar Chakravorti 

That would that would certainly be so much better. In fact, would be so much better if neither of these candidates was, you know, kind of standing from either party’s ticket in my opinion. 

00:18:47 Gareth Mitchell 

It's not amazingly edifying with the rest of the world looking on. I have to say. And so. 

00:18:54 Bhaskar Chakravorti 

Yeah. But, but I'm sorry on on this point, you know, it's kind of interesting as you just reflect on the latest call for Biden to step down. So the natural, the next person down the line is Kamala Harris, who herself has been a victim of cheap fakes. So one of the things that people hold against Kamala Harris is that they don't like the way she laughs. 

00:19:14 Bhaskar Chakravorti 

And you'll see lots of videos on the Internet of just Kamala Harris laughing. Now you can take like 20 videos of 20 different events where Kamala Harris is laughing and you string them together in a compilation and she looks maniacal. Anybody would look maniacal if you just have 20 different clips of them laughing and she has a good, solid belly laugh. That's about it. 

00:19:38 Gareth Mitchell 

Nothing wrong with that. I'm not, I'm not making a political point there. This is more of a kind of anti-laughter-ist point, I think.  

00:19:45 Bhaskar Chakravorti 

There you go. 

00:19:47 Gareth Mitchell 

So Wairimu, what are you and all your friends and colleagues making of all this in Kenya? Is is it a big story over there? 

00:19:55 Wairimu Gitahi 

Yeah. I mean in in Kenya, in many developing countries, when something is happening in the US, we are following it very seriously as we do every other thing, like their movies and all every other kind of literature. So obviously this is also quite a discussion. 

00:20:09 Wairimu Gitahi 

I was just laughing when Bhaskar was saying that, you know, the Biden side is doing these things and the Trump side is also doing the same. So who is better than who you know? And for me also a very interesting observation, which is obvious, but I don't hear many people talking about it I think. The age gap between the two of them is like, I think three years. 

00:20:31 Wairimu Gitahi 

So why is anybody calling the other old? You know, I I don't. I mean I I because there are signs of age from both of them and also like watching also the debate. I was hoping they would talk about more about the issues that are there and how they will be sorted out in the future. But you could see it was just 

00:20:52 Wairimu Gitahi 

like a, you know, like a rebuttal. You know, you you say you didn't do this in the past. I add on to what you didn't do, so I didn't see it as a very progressive discussion, at least from my side and from the people I've been discussing with. 

00:21:08 Bhaskar Chakravorti 

In terms of the issues, you know, Trump talked about the issues, except that he lied about everything and and then Biden tried to kind of bring him back to some statistics and facts and then stumbled over the statistics and the facts. So it wasnt the most [?] to watch. 

00:21:21 Gareth Mitchell 

The most cogent part of the debate was about the golf. 

00:21:26 Wairimu Gitahi 

Yes, I mean it's like two old men debating about, you know, guns. And I'm like, OK, we're talking about really big issues and your country affects everybody else in the world. But just to comment also, something about technology, which perhaps we are very much more interested in is 

00:21:46 Gareth Mitchell 

Yeah. Bring it back to tech please. 

00:21:48 Wairimu Gitahi 

from someone looking from Africa from this side, I find it very interesting that a country like the states can be using like cheap fakes, you know to to, to for our political campaign. I expected much more, you know, so I'm a bit like, alright, you know, this is really, really going low from from my perspective. At least I was expecting maybe they would have used something much more, you know complicated, but it seems like you know there there, there's nothing so new about what they're doing. 

00:22:21 Bhaskar Chakravorti 

So I think that's an interesting, that's an interesting point Wairimu to just reflect on. Which is the most effective technology is the technology that you don't even think about and it doesn't have to be the most sophisticated technology, it is the readily available technology, the minimum viable product, right. And so the the least you need is to make 

00:22:43 Bhaskar Chakravorti 

either candidate look unfit and you know unsuitable for the job and you have enough. You don't need AI at all for any of this. You need no technology other than a pair of digital scissors. So the cheap fakes are very effective, and the other part of technology is that technology needs to intersect with a narrative. 

00:23:04 Bhaskar Chakravorti 

And there is a narrative around Biden, for instance, that he's old. And so all this needs to do is it needs to confirm or reaffirm the concerns that people already have. So that's all that technology does. It's just a little nudge, and it is the most powerful technology there can be. 

00:23:22 Wairimu Gitahi 

That's so true. 

00:23:22 Gareth Mitchell 

Yeah, it's the powerful, power of confirmation bias, isn't it? Because I was just wondering if there is indeed any more going on than that Bhaskar, just in terms of orchestrating all this or if there's evidence of malicious troll farms churning this out, or if it really is just a case of people whoever they may be around the United States and outside just taking a clip, putting it on their phone, topping and tailing it in a slightly amusing way, and then just uploading it. End Of really. Is it a case of nothing to see here apart from that. 

00:23:53 Bhaskar Chakravorti 

Well, there's clearly, you know, deeper technology being used. You know, for instance, there was a whole robo call with Joe Biden's voice that was created using AI that was circulated in New Hampshire. And there are troll farms that are developing, you know, deep fakes of particularly the Democratic candidates. So that's happening. It's just that, you know, you don't really need it when the reality itself can be manipulated with just a little bit of low tech and cheap fake processes. 

00:24:28 Gareth Mitchell 

Yeah, the fakers are working with pretty good material, aren't they, really? Yeah. 

00:24:32 Wairimu Gitahi 

Yes, yes, it's all about viability. I agree with you. 

00:24:34 Gareth Mitchell 

Sure. OK. Well, look, we'll, we'll, we'll leave it at that for now, but I know we will get you back on if you'll say, yes, Bhaskar. And of course you Wairimu because it's it is something we're going to keep an eye on. That campaign is going to be interesting and not necessarily in a good way. But I think some of the tech insights could be illuminating. So let’s so what unfolds. 

00:24:54 Bhaskar Chakravorti 

Yeah, I think you know some, there is some interesting insights from other parts of the world where they actually did use, you know, to Wairimu’s point where, you know a little bit more technology was injected into these videos. For instance, there was a a video of a Bangladeshi politician in a bikini. Now, you know, that never helps in a Muslim country to show up in a bikini just before elections or, you know, a a clip of a politician essentially saying something nice about Israel. 

00:25:24 Bhaskar Chakravorti 

And that also never helps in a Muslim country, so more sophistication in terms of using high tech in election related disinformation has been circulating outside the U.S. rather than in the capital of tech, which is the U.S. 

00:25:41 Gareth Mitchell 

Sure. OK. Well, we'll leave it there. Bhaskar Chakravorti, thank you very much indeed. And to you Wairimu over there in Nairobi. And I may as well just give the usual reminders that you can get in touch with this podcast. We are hello at somewhere on earth.co on the e-mail. Hello at Somewhere on Earth.co on WhatsApp. We're international code 447486329484. I won't give out the number again. 

00:26:07 Gareth Mitchell 

Just jog back if you want to hear it again and just SOEPtech is usually a good hashtag to find us on across other social media. The audio production today has been from Keziah and Dylan, the production manager, is Liz. We are here at Lanson's Team Farner with editor Ania Lichtarowicz. And I'm Gareth. Thanks a lot for listening. See you soon. Bye bye.