Kwani you guys haven't been seeing the news ama this story is too abstract?

https://www.theguardian....faceook-nix-bannon-trump

Even ward reps will be using these tools soon if they aren't already. And on sportpesa, not just facebook.

Here is the trend:

1. Availability of 'big data' is opening up the discovery of the statistical nature of human behavior and psychology.

2. The mechanics of these statistics are based on a discipline called 'Psychon dynamics'

3. One postulate in psychon dynamics is that human cognition exists in differentiated but connected and interacting vector fields

4. Given that orthodox economics has failed on the account of not having perfectly rational and stable systems, there is a need to find ways of influencing/nudging the cognition vector fields of different people to achieve certain ends.

5. In a country like ours, sportpesa is a utility and domain that has a high population and is thus a rich vector field for nudging behavior

6. Thus a person wishing to nudge votes to their side and on a vector field like the risk averse population(gamblers) who can vote in a newbie who promises high return can focus psy-ops effectively.

@Mukiri, I think my post is more of a skeleton of use. How people use the skeleton is really up to them.

Benefits are negotiated. It's only in our decadent politics that benefits are prescribed and imposed.

Hard to know if they influenced outcome, but Uhuru used them both times...bragging about how they ran the Kenyan elections starts at about the 8:00 min mark...
Wasted money if you ask me...

Hardwood isnt a CA guy, those guys are subtle and sharp, high tech.

Hardwood is like those rungus everyone sees...must be Ole Tumbi employee/consultant.

What Kenyans are we talking about?

This is another example of the online crowd falling in love with their own noise and thinking everyone is like them. How many Wanjiku's own a smart phone, facebook account or twirra, or even care? Yet you can bet every Wanjiku knows about ballots and how they are cast and have an idea how they are won or lost.

Wazuans should listen to Masukuma more often. We are a low-tech society led by a privileged high tech elite who think their online navel gazing is holy writ for the masses.

If socio media decided elections in Kenya, Peter Kenneth would be governor of Nairobi and Mwangi would be MP for Starehe.

Alma1, I had a brilliant rebuttal to your post above. My best ever. So good that I am sure you would have been impressed. I was just about to press send when the power went off and with it, my moment of online greatness.

Point made:

We are a tech-poor society and anyone who claims to influence us through our online media presence is lying. At best he is polling a small sliver of this society, albeit a noisy group, but one that largely speaks only to itself. Towit, Peter Kenneth, who had one of the most savvy socio media campaigns in the last elections. He learned that millions of facebook likes, shares and retweets do not translate into ballots. You have to hustle.

As for the creation of the Railian bogeyman that you mention, that was a brilliant piece of myth making - Campbell would have been impressed. But it was not accomplished by technology. In fact it has been a work in progress that goes back to the Nyayo days, when Moi used to jail Rila as a proxy for hitting at his father, a tactic that Uhuru has reversed but applied with equal brilliance (he knocks the Luo people to stop Raila).

In building this myth and successfully selling it to gullible Kenyans, Moi, Kibaki, Uhuru and soon, Ruto, are of course aided by Raila's very obvious character flaws. But lets discuss this another day.

This is not how I have understood CA's role. I saw it more as a data mining company, which I think was how Tycho introduced this thread. Again I could be wrong.

While a political campaign certainly could use data mining to craft messages, it needs behaviour/preference/intention data, the kind that your facebook profile can easily show. My point is, a low tech society like ours has slim pickings in terms of useful data to be mined and don't tell me about Mpesa.

It benefits CA's image to push this myth of all seeing greatness and the fear that goes with it. But let me ask you: if they were so good, won't we have seen attempts by Facebook or Google to buy them out? After all these are the two corporates whose future is most strongly tied to the capacity influence thinking and behavior.

My sentiments exactly. Wanjiku out there only prides herself in a simple phone that has access to mpesa (and porn), all else comes secondary to putting food on the table. Unless its a media campaign, as most if not all people watch/listen to news, then it goes unseen.

Do the tech savvy even vote?