This week, Kenya joins the rest of the world in marking Global Media and Information Literacy Week, and this year’s theme—“We all play a part”—could not be more fitting. It is a reminder that the health of our information ecosystem is not just a matter for journalists, fact-checkers or tech companies. It is shaped by every person who shares, posts, comments, clicks and even scrolls past content. For Kenya, the timing is especially significant. With the 2027 general election slowly coming into view, the country is already beginning to think about campaigns, candidates and the quality of public debate. Yet there is a quieter, more dangerous conversation that needs to happen first: the way gendered disinformation is being used to push women out of politics and public life. The digital space has opened doors for women to speak directly to millions, to organise, to challenge narratives and to build movements. But it has also become a place where a woman’s credibility can be dismantled in a matter of hours. Not through fair critique of her record, but through coordinated, often vicious attacks on her appearance, marital status, sexuality, motherhood and emotional stability. This is not ordinary political criticism. It is a method of silencing and exclusion. It tells women that no matter how qualified they are, no matter how hard they have worked, their place in public life is conditional. Think about a woman who has spent decades serving her community, running for a seat, only to find that an anonymous account has posted a doctored photo of her, or a fake quote, or a video clip edited to make her look foolish. Think about how quickly that one post can be picked up by careless accounts, replayed in the news and repeated in marketplaces and churches. By the time the truth comes out, most people have moved on; they remember the scandal, not the correction. That is what gendered disinformation does. It controls the story, sets the agenda and commands attention, all while the woman in question is placed on the defensive, forced to answer for lies rather than to talk about the issues she actually cares about. And the consequences do not stay online. Reputations are damaged, women are harassed, families are affected, and countless young women decide that the cost of speaking up is simply too high. This is the reality Kenya must confront if it truly believes that everyone has a role to play in protecting information integrity and democratic participation.
Kenya already has sobering evidence of how real and widespread this problem is. The Kenya ICT Action Network, known as KICTANet, has been tracking technology-facilitated gender-based violence, and its own data for July to September 2026 documented 58 cases. In 43 of those cases—74.1 percent—the target was a woman or girl. That number is likely only a fraction of the real story, because so many cases go unreported and so many women have learned to laugh off abuse as “the price of being online.” Research published in November 2025 by the Centre for Information Integrity in Africa added a sharper focus to this issue. It looked specifically at gendered attacks and disinformation around the 2017 and 2022 Kenyan elections. Drawing on interviews with 11 professionals from journalism, digital rights, academia and civil society, as well as media reports, the research found a disturbing pattern. Women running for office and women in leadership were repeatedly portrayed as too emotional, too aggressive, too ambitious or simply unfit to lead. Their qualifications were rarely debated. Instead, their bodies, their relationships and their personal lives became the battleground. The 2022 International Election Observation Mission report by the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute similarly documented gendered attacks against women candidates. Together, these findings paint the same picture: disinformation has become a weapon of exclusion, aimed not at what a woman says, but at who she is allowed to be. These attacks are not random. They often peak at the moments when women become more visible, more credible or closer to winning. The goal is to make them look ridiculous, humiliated and damaged. In many cases, candidates have spent valuable campaign time issuing clarifications and denials instead of meeting voters and explaining their policies. Behind every statistic is a woman who has had to block accounts, delete posts, change her phone number, hire lawyers, or explain to her children why strangers are spreading lies about their mother. We cannot keep treating this as an unfortunate side effect of social media. It is a structural barrier to equal participation in democracy, and it is getting worse as technology becomes more sophisticated.
Kenya is not without a legal framework to address this. The Constitution protects dignity, equality, privacy and freedom of expression. The Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act, 2018, criminalises various forms of online harassment and misuse. These are important tools. But laws on paper mean little if they are not implemented effectively. When a woman reports online abuse, she should not have to prove that she is “strong enough” to handle it. She should not be told to ignore the threats, or to stay off social media if she cannot take the heat. Complaints need to be taken seriously, investigated sensitively, and resolved without forcing victims to relive their trauma in public. Police officers, prosecutors and judges need training to understand how gendered disinformation works and why it is different from a nasty tweet. Imagine a woman who has just been targeted by a deepfake. She goes to report it, only to be asked by a police officer why she was in such a compromising video. Imagine a prosecutor who dismisses the case as “just online gossip.” Imagine a judge who does not understand why an old screenshot can be more destructive than a punch. These are not hypothetical scenarios; they are recurring experiences for women in many countries, including Kenya. Enforcement must also respect constitutional rights: we cannot fight disinformation by censoring legitimate expression, silencing women again, or handing platforms arbitrary power. The challenge is not that Kenya lacks protections; it is that the protections are often too slow, too difficult to access, and too rarely used. Many women do not report because they believe nothing will happen, or because they fear the process will expose them to more abuse. Others are afraid of being blamed. That has to change. Legal frameworks need to be living systems, not just documents. They need to work for the people they are meant to protect. A law that is not enforced can even cause harm, because it creates a false sense of security and makes the failure to act feel almost deliberate. For women in public life, the message too often is: you have rights, but we will not actively defend them. If we are serious about the 2027 elections and beyond, we need a justice response that is as fast, creative and relentless as the attacks themselves.
The challenge is no longer just about angry posts or coordinated hashtag attacks. Artificial intelligence has made it easier and cheaper than ever to create fabricated audio, manipulated video and convincing synthetic images. A woman running for office could be placed in a fake video saying something she never said, or in a fabricated photograph designed to humiliate her. By the time she denies it, the false version has already been viewed, shared, screenshotted and turned into a thousand memes. Ordinary users increasingly cannot tell the difference between authentic material and deception, especially when a video looks and sounds real. This is why Media and Information Literacy Week is such a crucial opportunity for Kenya. It is not enough to tell people to be careful online. We need to teach specific, practical habits that can be used in everyday life. Before forwarding a shocking story, pause and ask: Where does this come from? Is the source credible? Has this been reported anywhere else? Is the publication date actually current, or is this an old story being recycled to cause confusion? Are the images and videos verified, or could they be generated by artificial intelligence? And critically, just because a post has thousands of likes, shares or angry comments does not mean it is true. Virality is not the same as reliability. These habits are particularly important during election periods, when the stakes are highest and disinformation campaigns are often at their most aggressive. Gendered disinformation tends to spread because it plays on existing stereotypes and emotions; it makes people feel scandalised or amused, and so it travels fast. Media literacy is not about making people cynical or distrustful of everything. It is about helping them develop a thoughtful, questioning mindset—one that refuses to be used as a tool to destroy another person’s dignity. In an age of deepfakes and algorithmic manipulation, the simple act of pausing before sharing can be a radical form of protection. Media literacy is not a luxury subject or a once-a-year event. It should be embedded in how we teach reading, history, science and social studies. It should be part of everyday conversation in homes, places of worship and community groups. It is not only about protecting women in politics; it is about protecting the integrity of all public debate.
Universities and learning institutions have a particular responsibility here, because they are the places where the next generation of journalists, lawyers, politicians, doctors, teachers and citizens is being formed. Journalism and communication programmes can integrate fact-checking, source verification and digital ethics into their core curricula. Law schools can teach students not only about cybercrime legislation, but about the real-world impact of online violence on democracy and human dignity. Political science departments can examine how disinformation shapes elections and how sexist narratives are used to undermine women’s leadership. Civic education programmes can help young people understand their digital rights and responsibilities, not as abstract ideas, but as skills they use every day. Student associations and youth-led organisations can organise fact-checking workshops, digital safety trainings and public conversations that challenge sexist stereotypes and online harassment. They can create peer-support networks so that when a young woman becomes a target, she does not have to face it alone. They can also be bold in calling out harmful content in their own communities, online group chats and campus societies. Young people are often dismissed as simply “addicted to their phones,” but they also have the digital fluency and social energy to lead change. They understand the platforms, the slang, the meme format and the algorithms. They can spot a manipulated image faster than many adults and can teach their families and friends to do the same. But they need guidance, space and support. Educational institutions should be more than just places where information is consumed; they should be laboratories for responsible participation. That means encouraging debate, critical thinking and empathy in equal measure. It means teaching students to defend the truth, and also to defend each other. It means helping them understand that a healthy digital democracy is not one where everyone can say whatever they want without consequence, but one where people can express themselves freely while respecting the dignity and rights of others. This is not a matter of censorship or political correctness. It is about basic fairness. When a young woman sees a classmate being attacked because of her looks, she learns an ugly lesson: that how she looks will always matter more than what she thinks. When a young man sees the same attack and no one challenges it, he learns another ugly lesson: that this is acceptable. Universities can break this cycle by creating an institutional culture that is hostile to sexist abuse and supportive of women who speak up. Lecturers can include gender analysis in their courses. Student leaders can adopt anti-harassment policies that apply online as well as on campus. And students can use their votes for student government to send a message that digital violence is not tolerated.
As the country moves toward the 2027 general election, there is a simple question Kenyans should ask themselves: what kind of digital democracy do we want? Do we want a space where women can participate without being subjected to disproportionate intimidation, humiliation and reputational attacks? Or do we want a space where talent is measured by how much abuse a person can withstand? The answer should be obvious. Women should not have to prove their worth by surviving online attacks. They should be able to debate policy, question authority, seek elective office and lead communities without fabricated stories being used to undermine their credibility. They should not have to spend their time and money scrubbing lies from the internet, or explaining to their children that the awful things strangers are saying are not true. Gendered disinformation is not an individual problem. It is a structural failure that requires a collective response. Media and Information Literacy Week is therefore an invitation to every Kenyan to play their part. It is an invitation to the university student who can challenge a sexist meme in a group chat. To the journalist who resists the temptation to sensationalise a woman’s personal life. To the police officer who takes an online abuse complaint seriously. To the parent who teaches a child that respect is not conditional on gender. To the voter who checks the source before forwarding a malicious story. To the party leader who refuses to use a rival’s gender as a weapon. Democracy is stronger when more voices are heard, not when voices are pushed out by lies and fear. If Kenya wants a free, fair and inclusive election in 2027, the work must start now, offline and online, in law, in classrooms, in newsrooms and in our own hearts. Let us remember that democracy is not simply a matter of holding elections. It is about who feels safe enough to stand for office, to speak in public, to criticise those in power and to ask the hard questions. If a woman cannot enter the digital public square without facing a barrage of gender-based lies and abuse, then the square is not truly public. It is an exclusive club with a high price of admission. That is not the democracy Kenya needs. That is not the Kenya most people want. The 2027 election is an opportunity to show that we can do better. It will be a test not only of candidates, but of citizens. It will be a test of how much we value truth, justice and the equal participation of women. And it will be a test of whether we really believe the theme of this week: we all play a part.