Reducing Disability Stigma in Kenya through Strategic Media Representations

Ableist portrayals in East African media have significantly contributed to the stigmatisation of disabled people, resulting in reduced opportunities in housing, employment, healthcare and civic engagement (Ndavula and Lidubwi, 2022; Rugoho, 2024). Collaborating with the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC), the Kenya Union of Journalists (KUJ), Signs TV and Action Network for the Disabled (ANDY), this project will pilot the design and testing of a toolkit for inclusive, non-stigmatising disability representations in Kenyan mainstream media. The aim is to enable media makers to sustainably reduce stigma and improve social attitudes through media content, considering the intersection of disability, age, gender, religion, class and other social identities. The project is a springboard for several new research agendas. It tests for the first time whether existing stigma reduction models can be successfully adapted to 1) media practice, 2) a disability context, and 3) an East African setting. This involves a range of interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary and cross-cultural risks, which will be explored. Context and Challenges Media has perpetually misrepresented disabled people, thus reinforcing stigmatising stereotypes that foster negative attitudes and discriminatory social practices and policies (Nario-Redmond, 2019; Internews, 2021). This is exacerbated in East Africa, where misconceptions, underpinned by cultural-religious traditions (Kpobi and Swartz, 2018) are widespread and often intersect with other marginalised identities, such as age and gender (King et al 2021). For instance, religious TV channels have portrayed disabled children as being associated with witchcraft, putting them at risk of abuse, abandonment and murder (Lidubwi, 2024). Furthermore, killings of people with albinism for collecting their allegedly “magical” body parts can be traced back to ableist superstitions still perpetuated by media (Baker and Imafidon, 2022). Aim and Objectives Nevertheless, media can be a vital instrument in countering stigma, as several Sub-Saharan African broadcasts illustrate (McConkey et al., 2016). However, such examples remain rare, and consistent industry approaches or guidelines are non-existent (Lidubwi, 2024). Also, disabled people have largely been excluded from informing the creation of media content about their community, which has precluded more nuanced and authentic representations in East Africa (ibid). Therefore, our pilot project explores how Kenyan media creators can adopt a preliminary, co-developed representation toolkit to sustainably reduce disability stigma. In the spirit of “Nothing about us without us” (Charlton, 1998), this intervention-driven proof of concept involves the inclusion of the disability community as co-creators in media representations, which will facilitate the design and testing of this toolkit. Therefore, we have the following research objectives: RO1: Map stigmatising and non-stigmatising disability representations in Kenyan mainstream media RO2: Map opportunities and obstacles in the Kenyan media industry for changing media practices RO3: Conceptualise and test a toolkit for Kenyan media creators to understand and apply strategic stigma reduction methods in their representations of disability RO4: Establish strategies and opportunities for the Kenyan disability community to inclusively collaborate with mainstream media creators, whilst adopting this toolkit. If successful, the outcome will inform a longitudinal follow-up project that expands the intervention across additional East African countries.