Social Media, Socio-Technical Affordances and News Sourcingin Kenya’s Evolving Print Media

Abstract

Social media has fundamentally reshaped journalism, yet theaffordances associated with its impact in legacy media,particularly in Global South contexts, remain underexplored. Thisarticle addresses this gap by examining the socio-technicalaffordances that have emerged from social media-drivendisruptions to sourcing practices in Kenya’s evolving print media.Guided by the theory of affordances, which conceptualizesaffordances as contextually embedded action possibilities thatboth enable and constrain human activity, the article draws on aqualitative multiple-case design involving two leading Kenyannewspapers, Daily Nation and The Standard. Data was generatedthrough in-depth interviews with 22 journalists (11 from eachnewsroom) selected through purposive and snowball sampling.Through a multiple-level thematic analysis, the findings show thatsocial media-driven disruptions to news sourcing can be linked tothree hierarchical socio-technical affordances: discovery,engagement, and validation. These affordances expandjournalists’ access to information, sources and audience feedbackwhile simultaneously intensifying verification challenges, ethicaltensions, safety risks and algorithmic dependence within Kenya’spolarized and resource-constrained news environment. The articlecontributes theoretically by extending the theory of affordancesto news sourcing, empirically by providing context-specificevidence from Kenya, and practically by highlighting the need forinstitutional support mechanisms to safeguard journalisticintegrity amid digital disruption.