use of digital television content in nurturing innovation in kenya: a study of nairobi’s media producers and engineering jua kali artisans

Abstract

The Nairobi engineering Jua Kali artisans struggle with finding information for innovation in the digital television platform. Information is a resource. It has value and it lets people do things that they could not do otherwise. It is apparent that knowledge is not distributed equally throughout society. People who are in financial poverty, such as Jua kali engineering artisans are also often information poor. An unexpected and undesired possibility is that mass communication content produced by media producers might actually have the effect of increasing the difference or gap in knowledge between members of different social classes (Severin and Tankard, 2001).Therefore the researcher sought to find out how digital television innovation content can be of use to nurture innovation among engineering Jua Kali artisans. The study objectives were: - To determine how engineering content shown in the Kenya digital platform inspires creativity for innovation among Jua Kali artisans. Further, to examine the challenges in place to produce edutainment content for engineering Jua Kali artisan; To assess whether digital television innovation content can be easily accessed by engineering Jua Kali artisans. The study took on a mixed approach involving qualitative and quantitative designs. It also employed a multiple case study method. A total sample size of 65 respondents was selected: 53 Jua Kali artisans were sampled for the quantitative aspect of the study through multistage sampling. An additional 5 Jua Kali artisan were sampled through snowballing and lastly7 media producers were purposively sampled for the interview process, which is the qualitative aspect of the study. The analysis of data was an interactive process along themes created from both quantitative and qualitative data. The findings showed that the majority (0ver 75%) of Jua Kali artisans had access to digital television platform gadgets. However Jua kali artisans (70.2%) found it difficult to locate work related content for from digital television platform. Media producers reported that there was low funding, poor policy structures and a rigid media industry inflexible to the audience needs. It is hoped that this finding will sensitize the digital television platform practitioners in Kenya and the rest of Africa on adopting strategies and developing policies that can encourage the production of innovative content for Jua Kali artisans.