Charlotte Ong’ang’a (University of Calgary).
Public opinion plays a pivotal role in raising awareness and evaluating government performance, especially regarding development issues. This study applies Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to examine recurring themes in opinions on Kenya’s Jubilee Government, as expressed in local digital dailies between April 2013 and December 2015. Drawing from a corpus of 1,000 opinions sourced from three leading Kenyan digital platforms—Nation Media, Standard Media, and Star Digital Media—this research utilizes van Dijk’s, Fairclough’s, and Wodak’s CDA approaches to uncover patterns within the discourse. Six key themes emerged: class differentiation, ethnic differentiation, religious differentiation, corruption, terrorism, and the push for equality. The findings highlight significant class and ethnic divisions, with corruption, terrorism, and negative ethnicity being dominant concerns tied to the Jubilee Government’s performance. These insights shed light on how public opinion shapes political behavior, influences government accountability, and impacts policy evaluation in Kenya.

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