On 21 October 2021, President Kenyatta received the BBI report while at the Kisii State Lodge. Shortly after and for the days to follow, we observed a set of hashtags that began to trend each day, containing narratives that were either supportive or critical of the implementation of the BBI proposals. This included hashtags #BBIorNothing, #RejectBBI, #BBIPeoplesAgenda and #RIPBBI. We noted that the most popular tweets across the four hashtags were from prominent influencers or politicians. Notably, one of the accounts used to amplify the #BBIorNothing was impersonating a prominent politician and has since been suspended by Twitter. The investigation revealed a network of 533 accounts that participated in three out of the four hashtags under consideration (#BBIorNothing, #RejectBBI and #BBIPeoplesAgenda). These accounts generated 3,676 tweets representing ~8.5% of the total number of tweets. 12 of these accounts were created after September 2020, just a month to the date of the first observed hashtag. Further, majority of the posts under the hashtags #BBIorNothing, #RejectBBI and #RIPBBI were critical of the BBI report, while majority of the posts under the hashtag #BBIPeoplesAgenda were generally in support of the report.
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