The discursive construction of covid-19 in selected whatsapp groups in Kenya: sociolinguistic, cultural and political realities

Abstract

This research critically investigated how Kenyans constructed meanings around COVID-19 through discourse in WhatsApp group chats, with particular attention to the linguistic, ideological and evaluative dimensions present in the selected online exchanges. Anchored in Fairclough’s (1995) Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and the Appraisal Framework (Martin & White, 2005), the study explores how participants in the selected Kenyan WhatsApp groups employed language to convey emotions, critique governance and present collective and individual identities during the pandemic. Adopting a qualitative CDA approach, the research analyzed WhatsApp chats from five purposively sampled WhatsApp groups drawn from different social and professional backgrounds. The corpus consisted of 61 chat threads collected between March 2020 and March 2021. Data analysis was guided by Fairclough’s three-dimensional model: textual, discursive and social practices, used alongside the Appraisal categories of Affect, Judgement and Graduation. The findings reveal three dominant discursive patterns in Kenyan WhatsApp group chats on COVID-19: a discourse of distrust and political critique, marked by deep scepticism toward leadership and institutional integrity; a discourse of economic struggle and social distress, reflecting frustration and disappointment with state-imposed restrictions; and a discourse of solidarity, hope, and resolve, demonstrating humour, irony and sarcasm as forms of social coping. The study further shows that linguistic choices such as medical, military and religious vocabulary, as well as everyday social register, shaped communication within Kenya’s socio-political context. Overall, the research illustrates how WhatsApp provided a virtual space for citizens to share experiences and articulate views on the government’s handling of COVID-19. It underscores the connection between what people say, how they feel, what they believe, and ultimately how they act. This research contributes to scholarship in digital discourse studies and critical linguistics in Africa since it offers theoretical and methodological perspectives on how social media platforms such as WhatsApp contribute to communication in times of national crises. It recommends that policymakers harness social media for transparent crisis communication, while scholars extend linguistic inquiry to multimodal and cross-cultural digital contexts.