Reputation can be described as the sum of the values that stakeholders attribute to a company, based on their perception and interpretation of the image the company communicates and its behavior over time.
A way of simplifying this definition is to say that reputation results from a company’s Performance + Behavior + Communication. In other words, your reputation is what others say about you based on shared perceptions. This differs from a company’s brand, which is based on what a company says about itself and how it behaves.
A solid reputation takes time and money to build and efforts are…
Influence operations are happening around the world and the best known example is perhaps the Russian intervention in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Less attention is given to influence operations in Africa, yet state actors and their proxies are very active on the continent. This piece traces some of the activities of Russia, Iran and China in terms of how they use their diplomatic, informational, military, economic and other capabilities to sway attitudes, behaviors, or decisions of target audiences in Africa.
The activities undertaken by these three countries are markedly different than what the U.S. has been pursuing. Since the…
Over the past decade or so, social and digital media have proven to be key factors in democratic processes across the world. Examples range from the 2016 U.S. presidential election, where numerous actors manipulated Facebook’s advertising platform and user profile data, to elections in Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Kenya. While the scale and impact of digital technology deployed in these examples may vary, Yuval Noah Hariri has warned that digital dictatorships could become omnipresent if too much data becomes concentrated in too few hands.
Research to date has largely focused on how social media are utilized to spread fake news…
It has been two months since a Fly-SAX plane crashed in the Abadare mountain range north of Kenya’s capital Nairobi, which tragically led to the death of all passengers and crew on board. Although the crash faded relatively quickly from the news, important lessons can be drawn from analyzing the crisis communications response.
This crisis is particularly interesting because it involved multiple stakeholders such as Fly-SAX and its parent company Fly 540, the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Defence, the Kenya Wildlife Service, the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA), and the Kenya Red Cross.
Using a framework called the…
Foreign direct investment (FDI) into Africa contracted by 21 per cent in 2017, almost in line with the global decline of 23 per cent, according to the latest World Investment Report by UNCTAD. The East African region, by comparison, was able to record a fairly stable performance mainly due to its strong economic performance and huge inflows into Ethiopia.
Recent newspaper headlines have been heralding the fact that Kenya bucked the generally negative FDI trend with inflows increasing by 71 per cent, making it the fourth largest FDI destination in East Africa. …
FDI into Kenya
When examining specific economies in Africa, Kenya stands out for being the largest in East Africa and also within the top ten largest on the continent. Moreover, several foreign direct investment (FDI) attractiveness indices rank Kenya highly.
Table 1: Kenya’s FDI Attractiveness Ranking
Facebook announced that it will roll out changes to the News Feed in the coming months. As a result, users will see more content from their friends and family and conversely less videos and content from brands. The change is supposedly promopted by Mark Zuckerberg’s concern about the mental health of Facebook’s users. However, do not expect Facebook to cannibalize its advertising revenue, as it is a public company accountable to its shareholders.
Facebook constantly changes its algorithm, but the recent announcement has publishers and particularly brands worried. It is widely acknowledged that publishers post far more content on Facebook…
We reviewed many industry leading sources to identify key developments in 2017 and look at predictions affecting the communications and marketing industry in the coming year. Here is what we found.
Fake News
- There was a huge surge of fake news and disinformation campaigns in 2017. There was a reported 365% increase in the word’s usage since 2016 and the Collins Dictionary appointed ‘fake news’ as its Word of the Year.
- Fake news is not going away anytime soon and experts warn that fake news and disinformation could get worse in 2018.
- In 2017, it was realized that social media does not…
Our Managing Director, Noah Miller, recently sat down with the social listening company Linkfluence to discuss a wide range of topics. The 2017 Kenya elections featured prominently in this Q&A. Below is an extract of the conversation and you can find the full interview here.
What role do you think social media played in this year’s general elections in Kenya?
Kenya had its first full-blown social media election in 2017. The digital tools and tactics were the same as we witnessed in other elections across the world: paid advertising, fake news, attack ads, use of political influencers, deployment of data mining companies, etc. Despite all the hype about social media use in Kenya, I believe…
Weary Kenyans cast their ballots on October 26 in the second presidential election held this year. Although political bloggers supporting the two main parties have been lighting up the Twittersphere for months, they too see to have lost steam. In a follow-up to a post made in mid-September, we revisit the impact that political bloggers have made in the social media space.
The Competitive Landscape on Social Media
Shortly after the August 8 general elections, we started to follow 18 bloggers affiliated with the Jubilee Party and 19 affiliated with the National Super Alliance (NASA). Together, they made 80,795 tweets in September and 55,254 tweets in…
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