Kenya
Survey sample primarily composed of English speakers
Kenya’s media landscape is undergoing profound change. Public interest in news remains high, but political tension, economic strain, and changes in media ownership are reshaping how journalism is produced and sustained, raising fresh questions about independence, sustainability, and who will hold power to account.
Trust in news remains relatively strong. However, it is often selective, anchored more in individual sources than in institutions. At the same time, many say they sometimes avoid the news, pointing to a more complex relationship with information, one that mixes engagement with fatigue.
Traditional media continue to play an important role, but their position is gradually weakening. Television still reaches a broad audience, though fewer people now rely on it as their main source of news. Print remains in long-term decline, and public-service broadcasters are also experiencing reduced reach.
Social media now sits at the centre of the ecosystem, with many encountering news through feeds, clips, and forwarded content rather than going directly to news brands. WhatsApp is particularly influential, acting as a key channel for circulating political information and rumours, and for mobilisation.
Platforms are no longer just places where news is shared; they are increasingly where it is discussed, interpreted, and shaped as events unfold. People are not simply consuming information but engaging with it: reacting, sharing, and debating in real time. Kenya stands out globally for the prominence of this creator layer, with many audiences turning to influencers, activists, and digital personalities for news and commentary. TikTok and YouTube are now central entry points to news and current affairs, particularly for younger audiences. Short explainers, satire, livestreams, and interviews, designed for speed and shareability, are becoming common and popular. Rather than replacing traditional journalism, these formats are reshaping how news is consumed and understood. On X the influence of creators is particularly visible in politics. Influencers, activists, and Spaces hosts operate in ways that resemble a form of parallel talk radio, convening audiences, shaping narratives, and amplifying interpretations in real time.
The financial strain on Kenya’s media sector has become more visible over the past year. Advertising revenues continue to migrate to global digital platforms, leaving domestic news organisations competing for a shrinking share of income. At the same time, delayed government advertising payments, reportedly amounting to KSh 866m (about US$6.7m), and owed largely to major legacy groups, including Nation Media Group (NMG), Standard Group, and Mediamax, have intensified these pressures, constraining newsroom operations and contributing to cost-cutting and layoffs.
This has also taken on a political dimension, with some media and press-freedom observers suggesting that government advertising and payment delays may be used to exert pressure on outlets that publish critical coverage.1 These dynamics are unfolding alongside a shift in state communication strategy, with plans to allocate public funds to social media influencers to promote government initiatives underscoring the growing importance of platform-based communication in shaping public narratives.
The ownership change at Nation Media Group takes on particular significance. NMG is East Africa’s largest media house and a historically important institution tied to Kenya’s independence-era mission of providing a voice for the majority population at a time when most Kenyans were excluded from political and media power.
For decades, its ownership under the Aga Khan’s Development Network provided a degree of insulation from direct political and commercial pressures. While not immune to influence, this structure meant the controlling shareholder was not deeply embedded in the same political and business networks the newsroom was expected to scrutinise.
The acquisition of a controlling stake in NMG in 2026 by Tanzanian businessman Rostam Aziz represents a structural shift. Aziz is a politically connected regional figure with extensive business interests and ties to Tanzania’s ruling party.2 This does not automatically translate into editorial interference. In fact, Aziz has promised to safeguard the group’s editorial independence while transforming the company for the future. Regardless, concerns abound that the new ownership may reshape the incentives and boundaries within which editorial decisions are made.
Technology is adding another layer of change. In 2026, Nation Media Group introduced a formal artificial intelligence policy framework to guide the use of AI across its editorial and business operations, including commitments to transparency where AI is used. Across the sector, newsrooms are experimenting with AI tools in areas such as content production, social media optimisation, and audience analytics. While these applications are largely focused on efficiency and distribution, adoption remains uneven, reflecting resource constraints and ongoing concerns about accuracy, ethics, and job security. Taken together, these technological shifts are unfolding alongside deeper structural changes in ownership, revenue, and distribution.
Catherine Gicheru
Director, Africa Women Journalism Project
George Nyabuga
Associate Dean and Associate Professor of Media and Journalism, Aga Khan University Graduate School of Media and Communications
In the online survey we ask respondents which news brands they have used to access news in the last week. These figures are based on respondents’ recall of the news sources they have used, and should be understood as survey-based measures of weekly brand reach for news.
They are not the same as web analytics, audience ratings, or other audience measurement systems (such as BARB for television in the UK). Those approaches use different methods and may measure different things. Our figures are based on what respondents tell us in an online survey about which brands they have used for news in the past week.
It is also important to note that we ask specifically about use for news. Some multi-genre broadcasters, newspapers, or other providers offer content beyond news, and the figures in our report should not be interpreted as measuring the overall audience reach for these media organisations. They refer only to respondents who say they used that brand to access news.
How do you ask about offline and online news reach?
We ask about offline and online reach separately. First, we ask respondents which brands they have used to access news offline in the last week, via TV, radio, print, and other traditional media. Then we ask which brands they have used to access news online in the last week, via websites, apps, social media, and other forms of internet access.
The questions as asked in the survey are:
Which of the following brands have you used to access news offline in the last week (via TV, radio, print, and other traditional media)? Please select all that apply.
Which of the following brands have you used to access news online in the last week (via websites, apps, social media, and other forms of Internet access)? Please select all that apply.
Respondents can select more than one brand in each question. For that reason, the figures do not add up to 100%. They show the proportion of respondents who say they used each brand for news in the last week.
How do you present the weekly news reach data in the report?
On each country or market page, we present the most widely used brands in two charts: one for offline news reach and one for online news reach. The offline chart covers use via TV, radio, print, and other traditional media. The online chart covers use via websites, apps, social media, and other internet-based forms of access.
The figures shown are weekly news reach: the percentage of respondents who say they used that brand for news at least once in the last week.
These figures are useful for comparing the relative news reach of different brands within each market, and for understanding how news use is distributed across offline and online sources. However, they should not be treated as market shares or measures of total time spent with a brand.
How do you choose which brands to ask about?
The brand selection is a strategic sample and not a comprehensive list of all news providers in each market. We consult with country or market experts, review prior years’ Digital News Report data, and draw on other data sources to identify the most widely used brands for news across traditional and online channels.
In some cases, where a news provider operates a number of related news brands, we aggregate these under a single heading. For example, in the UK, reach for the BBC may include use of several BBC news services across different platforms. This is done to give a clearer sense of the overall reach of major news providers, but it means that figures may not always refer to a single programme, website, app, newspaper, or channel.
Because of survey length limitations, we can only ask about a limited number of brands in each market. The charts should not be treated as exhaustive lists of every brand used for news in that market. Due to space limitations, reach charts show up to 16 of the most used brands, though we ask about more in each survey.
How should the offline and online figures be interpreted?
A respondent may use the same brand both offline and online, and may also use several different brands in the same week. For this reason, the offline and online figures should not be added together to calculate a total audience. They are best read as separate indicators of how far particular brands reach people through different forms of access.
As with other survey-based findings, small differences should be interpreted with caution. We are careful not to claim that one brand reaches more people than another, or that a brand’s reach has changed, unless the differences are large enough to be meaningful. Any year on year change of 2 percentage points or lower is not considered statistically significant.
Methodology note
These data are based on an online survey of mainly English-speaking, online news users in Kenya – a subset of a larger, more diverse, media market. Respondents were generally more affluent, younger (18–50 only), have higher levels of formal education, and are more likely to live in cities than the overall Kenyan population. Findings should not be taken to be nationally representative.
Share news via social, messaging or email
57%
(+6)
Avoid the news sometimes/often
46%
(-4)
Trust in news overall
68%
(+3)
Global average: 37%
Trust in news in Kenya is relatively high at 68%, indicating strong confidence in the media environment among the English-speaking sample. However, brand-level trust reveals a slightly more nuanced picture, with audiences differentiating between outlets and placing greater trust in familiar or frequently used brands.
We ask each respondent to rate a number of popular brands (usually 15 in each country) according to how trustworthy they think each brand’s news output is. We do this on a 0-10 scale, where a score of 0 means that the respondent does not see the brand as trustworthy at all and 10 means that they see the brand as completely trustworthy – with 5 meaning ‘neither trustworthy or untrustworthy’. There is an option for those who have not heard of any particular brand to ensure that scores are based only on responses from people who are familiar with each brand.
When we come to report these scores, we add up the proportion of respondents that give a score between 6-10 and mark this as ‘trust’. We also add up the proportion that give a brand a score between 0-4 and mark this as ‘don’t trust’.
The question as asked in the survey is…
How trustworthy would you say news from the following brands is? Please use the scale below, where 0 is ‘not at all trustworthy’ and 10 is ‘completely trustworthy’.
As we make explicit throughout the report, including next to tables presenting brand-level trust findings, whether respondents consider a brand trustworthy or not is their subjective judgement. The percentage figures shown are aggregates of people’s personal opinions, they are not an objective assessment of underlying trustworthiness. We leave it to each respondent to form an opinion on whether they trust someone or something, and we field the question because we consider the resulting data to be important.
How do you present the trust data in the report?
We present the data in an alphabetised table. In the past, we presented this data as a stacked bar chart, but this led some to treat the chart as a list of the most and least trusted news brands in a given market, despite our explicit explanation this was not what the tables showed.
We present the data in a way that avoids giving small differences the appearance of great importance. In cases where there is around two percentage points difference or less between the brands, we cannot say for sure that one brand is more trusted than another. We are careful not to try to claim that one brand is more trusted than another or that trust scores have changed unless those changes are statistically significant.
Due to survey length limitations, it is important to note that we only ask about 15 of the most widely used brands. It is very likely that there are brands with lower (and higher) trust scores that we do not ask about. For that reason, we cannot say that any brand is the least (or most) trusted overall. Next to each chart we are careful to say: “Only the below brands were included in the survey. It should not be treated as a list of the most or least trusted brands as it is not exhaustive.”
How do you choose which brands to ask about?
We consult with country or market experts, draw on prior years’ Digital News Report data and other data sources to determine the most widely used brands (across traditional and online channels) when it comes to news. We also try to include ‘local newspapers’ or ‘local television’ as catch-all titles as we recognise their impact is considerable in most markets.
How representative is this 48-market survey?
The Digital News Report survey is based on an online poll but the methodology selects participants to be as representative of national populations as possible. Samples are assembled using representative quotas for age, gender, and region in every market and data is weighted to targets based on census/industry accepted data. The full methodology can be found here.
How do you try to contextualise the findings to ensure that trust scores are not taken out of context or misinterpreted?
Trust is one of a number of measures we track, including consumption of different sources, device usage, social media use, and much more. We aim to maintain consistency in our measurements year-on-year so that ratings of trust, levels of news consumption, and more, can be contextualised.
Country data is accompanied by an 800-word commentary from a media expert that aims to set the data in a wider context. We write a short commentary on the trust scores where appropriate, noting any statistically relevant changes.
RSF World Press Freedom Index
106/180
Score 50.51
Measure of press freedom from NGO Reporters Without Borders based on expert assessment. More at rsf.org
