Kenya in crisis: a search for citizen cameras…

The crisis in Kenya may ultimately stem from a democratic failure, corruption and tribalism, or poverty and inequality, but either way, evidence of brutal violence continues to emerge, both in terms of killings and of violence against women and girls, and there’s news of an impending health crisis. For a quick tour d’horizon, including ways to act, click “more” below.

Some of the top Kenyan bloggers have been providing compelling updates since the beginning of the election campaign – of those that I read regularly, Kenyan Pundit and Mental Acrobatics particularly stand out – and it’s worth keeping an eye on Global Voices’ Kenya Elections page. That said, we’ve been finding it difficult to track down much citizen video or audio at all from Kenya thusfar – if you come across any, or we’re missing something obvious, please let me know via the comments, or upload it to the Hub. I’ve been wondering why it’s taking time for video to emerge – is the footage out there, but just not online yet? Was it just too insecure and dangerous to film during the first few days? Here’s a by no means comprehensive scour for video, audio and photos out of Kenya in recent days…

Video / Audio / Photos:

The only source providing genuine street-level citizen reporting that I can find is AfricaNews’ Voices Of Africa, which equips local reporters with cellphones, and dubs them “camjos”. It’s a general news site, using traditional media reporters, and the range of post-election reports includes police turning back protesters, and an interview with a Somali refugee, as well as an interview with a tourist industry representative and signs of daily life returning to normal in Nairobi. The reports are of varying quality and interest, but they provide a much more street-level view, and point to the potential video-enabled cellphones might bring to human rights reporting.

It’s not quite clear to me whether this is related to an initiative by Media Focus on Africa, a Dutch-Kenyan NGO, equipped several reporters around the country with high-end video-enabled mobile phones – the reports on this site appear to end on 21st December, before the election.

Over at YouTube, another Kenyan online effort, Kenya Votes, conducted vox pops with ordinary Kenyans in the run-up to the elections, including this young woman expressing her fears about tribalism:

As you might expect, there’s plenty of traditional media coverage on YouTube – Kenya’s own Nation TV, the BBC, Al Jazeera English, and CNN are all putting video reports and interviews online. Rocketboom’s Ruud Elmendorp has a short video report from the days before the election. Currently individual users, like YouTube newbie theweepingsoul, seem to be using news images culled from the web in homages to the photojournalists and other journalists getting images out and in pleas to end the violence.