How US media firm poisoned 2017 poll

Two campaign videos that were circulating before the August 8 Presidential polls have been traced to an American firm.

The Texas-based Harris Media produced and anonymously circulated one video targeting Raila Odinga titled The Real Raila and another backing President Uhuru Kenyatta tiled Uhuru for Us.

This is the first time that the two videos posted just two weeks to the elections have been linked to the firm.

According to UK-based Privacy International (PI), Harris Media worked on The Real Railavideo that sought to portray the Opposition leader as 'a dangerous, racist xenophobe with promoting his tribe and family as his primary political aim'.

The Real Raila and another site that links back to Uhuru for Us share an IP address with Harris Media’s own website and over 30 conservative campaigns,” reports PI.

Uhuru for Us promoted the achievements of the President and went on make a case for his election for another term in office.

HORRIFIC IMAGES

Horrific images, drawn mostly from the 2007/2008 post-election violence, were used in The Real Raila video to discreetly link the Opposition leader to Kenya’s violent past.

The videos targeted specific audiences depending on political affiliation, suggesting the Harris Media might have harvested personal information such as ethnicity and sex to profile potential voters.

The firm is on the spot for polarising messages sent out to unsuspecting users of social media platforms, including Facebook.

Online profiles enabled the firm to run a data-driven dirty campaign though faceless forces which could not be traced back to anyone, frustrating agencies tasked with fighting hate.

THE VIDEOS

From the videos, Harris Media has elaborate information about Kenyans from browsing history, location, online friends, or how frequently they charged phone batteries.

It then used the data to infer additional, unknown information such as gender, personality, preferred candidate, emotional state, and sexual orientation.

“This is then used to create a profile of you. The profile is used to selectively target custom audiences with shiny, sometimes bespoke political ads,” PI reported.

The firm also used a digital technique that ensured that their content always came up at the top when specific words were sought in search engines such as Google.

The Real Raila came top in search results to words such as violence or Raila.

A search of the words president and Uhuru redirected users to the Uhuru for Us website.

Revelations about the involvement of Harris Media come to light amid global concern about the dirty tricks employed by British firm Cambridge Analytica (CA), which played a major role in two presidential elections in Kenya.

Chris Wylie, the whistleblower in the emerging scandal, added a new twist to the saga, revealing that he got a job at CA after the death of Romanian Dan Muresan, a CA employee, in 2012.

PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN

Wylie told international media outlets that Muresan’s body was found in his hotel room in Nairobi, where he was working for President Uhuru's campaign.

There has been little information about the death.

Julia Pataki, the Romanian ambassador to Kenya, told The Standard that the family of the political strategist did not want the cause of his death to be made public.

“He was an only child and we shall respect the wishes for privacy of his mother and fiancée, who came to collect the body,” Ms Pataki said.

She did not name the hotel Muresan’s body was found or whether police ever investigated the death.