ABSTRACT

This study investigates emerging news consumption patterns among a contingent of young people drawn from two public universities in Kenya. Guided by the relatively new concept of scalable sociality and emerging third wave of non-normative audience studies in sub-Saharan Africa, this study maps emerging news exposure avenues among young people in Kenya. Through a mixed approach, it specifically explores how young people access and consume news through internet-enabled mobile devices. It also probes how young people define news and draws a nexus between the rise of news technologies, particularly mobile phones and the shifting definition(s) of news. Findings support the conclusion that internet-enabled mobile devices continue to cause unprecedented disruption in Kenya. This has profoundly altered the understanding of news. News was mainly understood as a node that connects young people to themselves and to the social world. However, the ambivalence evident in young people’s conceptualization of news is reflective of the dynamic society within which the internet and mobile devices are critical catalysts in accessing and consuming news. News consumption thus becomes a complex, multilayered process enmeshed in a web of technical and social networks online and offline.

摘要

本研究调查了来自肯尼亚两所公立大学的一群年轻人中新兴的新闻消费模式。在撒哈拉以南非洲相对较新的可扩展社交概念和新兴的第三波非规范受众研究的指导下，本研究绘制了肯尼亚年轻人中新兴的新闻曝光途径。通过混合方法，它专门探讨了年轻人如何通过支持互联网的移动设备访问和消费新闻。它还探讨了年轻人如何定义新闻，并在新闻技术（尤其是手机）的兴起与新闻定义的变化之间建立了联系。调查结果支持以下结论：支持互联网的移动设备继续在肯尼亚造成前所未有的破坏。这深刻地改变了对新闻的理解。新闻主要被理解为连接年轻人与自己和社会世界的节点。然而，年轻人对新闻概念化的矛盾情绪反映了一个动态社会，在这个社会中，互联网和移动设备是获取和消费新闻的关键催化剂。因此，新闻消费变成了一个复杂的、多层次的过程，被在线和离线的技术和社交网络网络所包围。