Anyone can be a digital detective now: The rise of citizen-led online investigations in Kenya

The video was brutal. During the anti-government protests that swept through Nairobi on 17 June, a masked police officer was captured on camera raising his gun and shooting an unarmed bystander at point-blank range. 

The police issued a familiar-sounding statement: a vague acknowledgement of the “incident,” with no name, no arrest, and only a general promise that the officer would be brought to justice. But this time, the old script unravelled. Within hours, the officer’s identity was circulating online, the result of a crowdsourced investigation led by young, tech-savvy Kenyans who turned into digital detectives. 

On X, TikTok and Facebook, users scoured through photos and videos of police shared earlier that day. In some footage, an officer appeared unmasked, wearing a distinctive camouflage bandana, the same one which had covered the shooter’s face. On his wrist, a unique bracelet. 

These small visual clues became the breadcrumbs that led to a TikTok account where the same man had posted clips of himself wearing identical accessories. 

One user posted two photos: one showing the officer, earlier in the day, without a mask and wearing a distinctive cap. In the second image, the user had circled key identifiers – the cap and camouflage bandana, the bracelet on his wrist, and specific tactical gear. The message was clear: same man, same day. Another user shared screenshots from TikTok showing the officer’s full profile and videos of him wearing the bandana. 

Soon, his details were circulating online, including his name, mobile number, and social media accounts.  By the following day, faced with mounting public pressure and the officer’s identity already public, the police issued a second statement, this time officially naming him and confirming his arrest. He now faces murder charges. 

This crowdsourced citizen-led investigation wasn’t without missteps. Earlier that day, as online users scrambled to identify the shooter, some attempted to enhance pixelated and unclear photos using AI image generators, hoping to sharpen facial features or make identification easier. The AI-enhanced images quickly circulated online alongside the authentic footage, muddying the digital trail.  

A new field fuelled by frustration

A growing number of Kenyans are using open-source intelligence techniques to identify perpetrators of abuse, geolocate incidents of violence, and stitch together timelines of unrest, filling the accountability void left by traditional institutions. What once required forensic expertise or institutional backing is now happening in real time on social media.  

“Kenya has long faced human rights violations, from police brutality during protests to abductions and extrajudicial killings, which are often met with denial,” said Mike Yambo, who works as Investigations Lead Forensics Unit at Nation Media Group and has built a following documenting protests using OSINT techniques. “Where transparency is limited, open-source tools help expose the truth, document abuses, and amplify citizens’ voices for accountability.”

The catalyst was the high-profile investigations, such as BBC Africa Eye’s Blood Parliament, which reconstructed the storming of Kenya’s Parliament during protests in June 2024. Inspired by it, ordinary Kenyans are using geolocation tools, reverse image searches, and video metadata analysis to analyse floods of citizen-captured footage. 

“Blood Parliament was viral. It was the biggest story,” said Thomas Mukhwana, an investigative journalist at Africa Uncensored who has used similar techniques in his own reporting. While some local outlets had experimented with OSINT before, he said, the film brought it into the mainstream, showing a wider audience how open-source videos and photographs could be pieced together to reconstruct and verify a crime. 

The documentary’s methodology fascinated viewers. “People didn’t know that you could use someone’s blurry picture and a part of their shoulder to prove that they belonged to a certain security agency,” Mukhwana explained. “Or that you could use clocks around the city to find what time someone was doing something.” 

Back then techniques like geolocation were still unfamiliar to many Kenyans. But today many have begun experimenting with these tools. Linda Ngari, a freelance investigative journalist and trainer, has watched  citizens adopt these techniques with remarkable speed. “It’s gone beyond basic reverse image searching on Google to now complex stuff like geolocation,” she said. 

A tech-savvy generation steps in 

The June 2024 protests, which saw young Kenyans storm Parliament over a controversial finance bill, became a proving ground for these methods.

“We have a more technically savvy generation,” said Mercy Mutindi, a technology lawyer who has observed the rise of digital investigations. “There’s a lot of anger about historical injustices, and there's a lot of mistrust in terms of the institutions that should fix it.”

What makes these citizen-led investigations especially powerful is their speed. While traditional media organisations might take weeks to verify information and official investigations can drag on for years, online communities can identify suspects much more quickly. “You have citizens who can collect evidence in one hour,” Mutindi noted.

This digital activism strategically forces the authorities’ hand. 

“It fires up the pressure,” Mutindi said. “Because once we go through all this and we’ve come up with an identity, we’ve mapped it. We’ve put it out there. It puts pressure on the government to respond.” She describes how citizen investigators fundamentally change the dynamics of an official inquiry. Where the police might issue a vague statement about “looking into” an incident, online sleuths present them with a nearly completed case file. 

“They’ve already skipped like 40% into the investigation,” Mutindi said. 

This pre-investigation creates a public expectation that the official system can no longer ignore. But this speed comes with trade-offs. Professional journalists follow editorial standards, seek multiple sources, and provide a right of reply. Citizen investigators often skip these steps, driven by urgency and anger. 

Mutindi describes this new wave as young people balancing day jobs with passion projects. “They are determined to use their skills for change by showing up not just in the streets, but online,” she said. 

Professional journalists like Yambo navigate this tension by maintaining rigorous standards while embracing new tools. “As much as I employ these new techniques in my reporting, I prioritise transparency, accuracy, and fairness,” he said.  

Mukhwana agreed, noting that verification is what separates journalism from social media investigations. “Before I publish a story, if something isn’t confirmed beyond a reasonable doubt, I will not go ahead and publish it,” he said. “For other people who are not professional journalists, there’s no process because they are the final say.” 

“OSINT is a double-edged sword,” Yambo said. Used responsibly, it can expose wrongdoing and hold power to account; used carelessly, “it can harm the very person wielding it.” 

When digital sleuthing goes wrong 

The same tools that can expose police brutality can also destroy innocent lives. During the protests, personal details, including photographs, family information, job titles, and home locations of innocent people who had done nothing wrong, were shared online. Some of the posts were later retracted or debunked, but by then the damage had already been done. 

Ngari witnessed these ethical pitfalls firsthand. “A photo of a house was posted online, claiming it showed where people were being detained by security agencies,” she recalled. “Someone later clarified that the resident had nothing to do with it. But by then, the post had already circulated widely.” 

The protests also saw extensive doxxing. Phone numbers, addresses, and personal details of politicians and government agents were shared widely. Women bore the brunt of harassment, with some facing sexual threats and image manipulation. 

This kind of harassment often extended beyond online posts. Mutindi, the lawyer specialising in technology law, recalled a case where a veteran media personality, Fred Machoka, was bombarded with midnight calls and texts from strangers insulting him over an online accusation made against his niece, who at the time was a nominated member of parliament. 

Citizen investigators operate in a legal grey zone, which is largely unchecked. “If you point to someone and you’re wrong, you’ve effectively dragged an innocent person through the mud,” Mutindi said. “You doxx their contacts, their family gets harassed, and all that public anger lands on the wrong person.” 

Even when an identification is correct, the vigilante-style justice that follows can undermine the very rule of law these investigators seek to uphold. It preempts due process and the principle of ‘innocent until proven guilty.’ 

“For the public, you are considered guilty on camera; it’s an open and closed case,” Mutindi said. “The law still gives a right to a fair hearing.” And those who get it wrong face potential legal risks, including civil suits for defamation and criminal charges under Kenya’s Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act. 

Filling the Vacuum 

The rise of citizen investigations reflects deeper institutional failures. Kenya's police force has long struggled with corruption and a culture of impunity. Traditional media organisations, meanwhile, face budget constraints and sometimes lack independence.

“Quite a number of citizens doing this actually have much better skill sets than some of the cops or government agencies that would be trying to do the exact same thing,” Mutindi noted. Kenya’s police cybercrime unit, based in Nairobi, serves the entire country with limited resources.

The gap has created space for citizens to step in. “Anyone can hold power accountable,” Ngari said. 

During the protests, people created customised chatbots that explained the controversial finance bill and compiled databases of allegedly corrupt officials. When protesters were abducted, online networks tracked their locations and pressed for their release. 

“If people put in place systems that ensure citizens feel safe and protected, then collaboration can thrive,” argued Mutindi. “There’s so much goodwill when people see it’s not going to lead to victimisation or mistakes.” 

How are journalists responding?

Traditional journalists are still figuring out how to respond to this citizen-led movement. For professional OSINT practitioners like Yambo, citizen investigators present both opportunities and challenges.

“I see citizen investigators as collaborators and, at times, valuable sources,” he said. “They bring raw, ground-level insights that enrich investigations. While their methods may lack the rigour of professional journalism, their contributions help uncover leads and highlight issues mainstream media might miss.” 

Yambo points to the strengths of crowdsourced investigations. “They tap into collective intelligence, speed, and reach. Citizens often capture real-time evidence, provide local context, and flag issues journalists might overlook.” But he is equally clear-eyed about the risks. “They can lack verification standards, risk spreading misinformation, and expose contributors to security threats.” 

Mukhwana agreed that the two worlds can work in tandem but warned against blurring boundaries. “Where professionalism exists on the journalism side, it might not really exist on the other,” he said. “You don’t want to blur those lines between journalism and social media.” 

He views citizen-led investigations as valuable starting points that should be verified and contextualised by trained reporters, not replacements for the journalistic process. “As long as we are both trying to get to the closest version of the truth and advancing public accountability, I wouldn’t see them as competitors,” Mukhwana said. “But we must keep clear boundaries.” 

The barriers to professionalising OSINT in Kenyan newsrooms remain steep, including limited funding, uneven access to technology, gaps in training, and persistent safety concerns for those who expose powerful interests. Still, the momentum is unmistakable. Each protest and viral clip pulls more Kenyans into the act of verification, slowly reshaping what it means to hold power to account. 

How to create a new accountability ecosystem 

For Mukhwana, this citizen-led movement “signals a shift” in who gets to investigate. He sees it in the evolution of “DCI Twitter,” a term borrowed from Kenya’s Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) to describe a community of social media users who hunt for clues, solve mysteries, and increasingly pursue public accountability.

“In the past, it was just gossip news,” he said. “But now it’s deeper. Now it’s ‘let’s look through those documents, let’s debunk this.’” 

“Nation and Africa Uncensored are the only media houses doing consistent investigative journalism,” Mukhwana noted. “The others are leaning more toward political news, partly because of political influence in ownership.” 

NGOs and legal aid groups are adapting by providing digital security training and legal support for citizen investigators. Courts are slowly learning to handle digital evidence. Even government agencies are being forced to respond more quickly to public pressure. 

But questions remain about sustainability and ethics. The techniques are powerful, but they come with real risks to individuals wrongly accused, to due process, and to social cohesion. As Mukhwana warned, citizen investigations can easily go horribly wrong.

The movement also faces the challenge of misinformation. During the protests, false narratives about massacres in certain locations spread quickly through the same networks used for legitimate investigations.

“People will do as much as possible in the little time that they have to get to a version of the truth that confirms what they think, not the [full] truth,” Mukhwana said. 

Whether this new ecosystem will mature into something sustainable and ethical remains an open question. But Kenya's digital detectives are not going away and the shift may be irreversible. As technology lawyer Mutindi observed, this new reality is forcing itself upon the country’s institutions, whether they like it or not. 

“We are not going to be able to continue ignoring it,” she said. 

The question is no longer if institutions will respond, but how. The digital detectives have already made their move.