This archive report was first published on 3 November 2021.
Pandora Papers Expose Kenyan Elite's Offshore Secrets ¶
On October 3, 2021, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) published the Pandora Papers, a massive investigation into how several public figures use offshore tax havens to hide assets worth billions of dollars. The Pandora Papers implicated the family of Kenya's outgoing president, Uhuru Kenyatta, in offshore financial engagements.
Kenya has a long history of political families stashing massive amounts of money abroad. The Pandora Papers' release came at a charged time, with Kenya nearing the 2022 elections and the country's political scene fresh from a heated debate on wealth declaration.
For many Kenyans, the Pandora Papers were the perfect summation of Uhuru Kenyatta's regime: One plagued by corruption scandals, soaring inequality, debt, and skyrocketing commodity prices. Through social media, they expressed their frustrations, with the hashtag #Pandorapapers trending on Twitter's Kenyan ecosystem.
Twitter's Role in Disinformation ¶
However, peculiarly absent from the conversation within the first 48 hours of the Pandora revelations was coverage from local media outlets in Kenya. The silence didn't go unnoticed, with Kenyans calling out the media demanding that they cover the issue.
A temporary absence of critical mainstream media coverage created an information vacuum that became fertile ground for a disinformation campaign aiming to pacify the scandal following the leaks. With the government and the president under pressure, a counternarrative operation was mounted and found a strong ally in Twitter.
Twitter's trending algorithm amplified these campaigns to millions of Kenyans who were using the platform to find information about the leaks and engage in discussions about them. As a result, a distorted perspective began to gain momentum, where Kenyans appeared outraged not by the Pandora Papers' damning findings but by their implication that Uhuru Kenyatta was guilty of wrongdoing.
According to new research by two Mozilla Fellows, Odanga Madung and Brian Obilo, online disinformation campaigns are attempting to exonerate the leader. The investigation reveals that Kenya's flourishing disinformation industry has once again sprung into action, with well-paid disinformation influencers and sophisticated tactics successfully manipulating Twitter's trending algorithm.
Madung and Obilo carried out the research over a four-week period, speaking with multiple disinformation influencers in Kenya who receive regular payments and detailed instructions about when and what to tweet from shadowy employers. They also used data from Twitter's Firehose to comb through over 10,000 tweets and 2,000 accounts that behaved inauthentically.
Highlights of the investigation include:
- Astroturfing was the tactic of choice, with manufactured tweets flooding the platform to game Twitter's trending algorithm.
- Outright lies were also deployed, including completely fabricated content and fake images.
- Kenya's disinformation industry continues to flourish, with a shadowy and sophisticated network of fake accounts, artificial hashtags, and well-paid disinformation influencers.
- Twitter remains negligent, with some of these Pandora Paper campaigns unfolding on Facebook but the majority occurring on Twitter.
