This research explores how anti-gender narratives operate within Kenya’s digital media environment. It asks one central question: In what ways do anti-gender narratives function as a form of power online in Kenya, and how do communities respond?
Using a mixed-methods approach, the study combines desk reviews, digital data scraping, and focus group discussions with feminist, youth, and digital rights stakeholders. These methods enable mapping of how anti-gender narratives are created, amplified, timed, and experienced, and how people targeted by backlash adapt, resist, and survive.
Findings show that anti-gender discourse in Kenya is unevenly distributed, concentrated in particular spaces, emotionally charged, and deployed strategically. Analysis of 27,022 scraped posts reveals that anti-LGBTQ+ content forms the bulk of the dataset, with Telegram serving as an important coordination hub. The research highlights the importance of emotion and format in the spread of messages, noting that narratives intensify at specific trigger moments through dense, interconnected networks that reinforce one another. The study also finds that although these narratives are often presented as culturally local, many of their frames, terms, and tactics are imported from transnational sources.
The effects of this narrative system extend beyond online conversations. Anti-gender narratives create institutional hesitation, semantic confusion, and biased media coverage. At the same time, resistance remains active and resilient. Communities counter with encrypted networks, peer-led safety measures, creative storytelling, and strategic counter-messaging.
© Meza Yetu Collective and RNW Media, 2026
