What Kenya’s newsrooms are covering, and in what tone — strikes, the
cost of living and sport alongside Bills and MPs, from a fixed allowlist of
Kenyan outlets. Use Subject below to narrow it to Parliament
only. See exactly how it works.
This is a media-coverage tone tracker, not an opinion poll.
It measures how allowlisted Kenyan newsrooms covered a story, as read by an
AI classifier with human review — it says nothing about what Kenyans as a whole
think or approve of. What each item is about is decided once, when the
item is stored, and the Subject control just narrows to that stored answer.
No figure is shown from fewer than 5 reviewed items,
and every figure traces back to the listed items below. See the
methodology for the full pipeline and its limits.
The feeling behind the coverage
Tone says whether coverage was good or bad. This says what the feeling
is — and those come apart where it matters: anger and fear are
both negative, but a country that is frightened is in a different place
from one that is furious.
Each spoke is one of Plutchik’s eight basic emotions, scored per
item and averaged. Opposites face each other, so a lopsided shape is
the finding. The outer ring is 17%
— the strongest reading here (Sadness) —
not 100%, so the shape stays readable. Every figure below is the plain
average.
Joy5%
Trust12%
Fear14%
Surprise7%
Sadness17%
Disgust11%
Anger14%
Anticipation14%
Strongest reading: Sadness
at 17%.
Measured over 7444 scored items,
with 5 items in this view not yet
scored for emotion and left out of the averages rather than counted as
zero.
What the National Assembly is working on — for each Bill: its current
stage, how media is covering it, and what
citizens have submitted. These are three separate readings,
never blended into one score.
Parliamentary activity as of the last recorded
bill-stage record: 8 Oct 2026 — this can lag by a
few weeks, and Parliament may be in recess.
Everything below measures the tone of media coverage of Parliament
across all topics — background context for the Bills above. It is not public opinion
and not a poll.
What’s moving this week
Topics ranked by current coverage volume × how far their tone moved against
the trailing four-bucket baseline (weekly buckets where the week has
5+ reviewed items, else monthly). A topic only ranks when both
windows clear 5 items.
Education
→
0.05
n = 82 items this week
· baseline -0.13 (n = 236)
Security
→
0.04
n = 83 items this week
· baseline -0.28 (n = 326)
Economy & Taxation
↑
0.07
n = 44 items this week
· baseline -0.15 (n = 217)
Agriculture
↓
-0.14
n = 22 items this week
· baseline 0.09 (n = 79)
Devolution
→
-0.02
n = 160 items this week
· baseline -0.12 (n = 698)
7449Items analysed (n)
16%Positive (1197 of 7449)
51%Neutral (3780 of 7449)
33%Negative (2472 of 7449)
Coverage tone over time
Positive
Neutral
Negative
Jun 2026n = 39
Jul 2026n = 270
Aug 2026n = 446
Sep 2026n = 2552
Oct 2026n = 3962
Nov 2026n = 180
Each column is one month of reviewed coverage, split by tone. A month with
fewer than 5 reviewed items is left out entirely, so the months
shown need not be next to each other in time.
That is why the columns are deliberately not joined up: a
line drawn between them would invent a trend across the gap.
How the coverage splits
Positive16%1197 of 7449
Neutral51%3780 of 7449
Negative33%2472 of 7449
16%51%33%
What Kenyans are talking about
Topics ranked by how many reviewed items mention them. One item can mention several, so these do not sum to the item count.
Bar length is how many items mentioned it. The colour is the average tone,
shown only where there are at least 5 items — a shorter bar is a
smaller sample, not a quieter mood.
A single item can mention several topics, so these mentions sum to more than the 7449 items analysed. Topics under 5 mentions show no average.
Topic
Mentions (n)
Average tone
Devolution
1683
-0.15 (n = 1683)
Security
833
-0.31 (n = 833)
Governance & Constitution
753
-0.13 (n = 753)
Healthcare
727
-0.15 (n = 727)
Education
656
-0.15 (n = 656)
Economy & Taxation
545
-0.20 (n = 545)
Corruption & Accountability
254
-0.33 (n = 254)
Agriculture
226
0.03 (n = 226)
Which newsrooms are covering it
Every source here is on the allowlist published in the methodology.
The Standard
2733-0.20
People Daily
2543-0.06
Citizen Digital
2158-0.07
Nation
14-0.38
The Star
1too few to average
Bar length is how many items mentioned it. The colour is the average tone,
shown only where there are at least 5 items — a shorter bar is a
smaller sample, not a quieter mood.
Coverage tone by source — show the data table
Source
Items (n)
Average tone
The Standard
2733
-0.20 (n = 2733)
People Daily
2543
-0.06 (n = 2543)
Citizen Digital
2158
-0.07 (n = 2158)
Nation
14
-0.38 (n = 14)
The Star
1
too few (n = 1)
Recent Items
Every figure on this page is built from items like these — each linked to its source.
Tigrayans turn against former ruling party after fresh fighting
This page tracks the tone of media coverage — it is NOT a statistical
opinion poll and never measures public opinion or approval. What the
public itself is saying is a separate lane, on its own page:
What Kenyans are saying. The pipeline here:
articles from a fixed allowlist of Kenyan outlets (Nation, The
Standard, The Star, People Daily, Citizen Digital, NTV Kenya, K24 Digital, KBC,
Capital FM, Business Daily, The EastAfrican and Taifa Leo) are collected every few
hours; a classifier first scores each
item’s relevance to the Parliament of Kenya, and items
below the relevance floor are rejected outright.
Surviving items are classified positive / neutral / negative
(with a −1.0 to +1.0 score) by an AI language model; confident
calls publish, borderline ones wait in a human review queue.
Items are then linked to the members and Bills they name, with uncertain links
held for editor review. No average is shown from fewer than
5 reviewed items, every average is printed with its
sample size, and every figure traces to the listed items with source, link and
date. Full details: methodology.
