Live Broadcast Of Parliamentary Proceedings And Its Impact On The Legislative Oversight Role Of The Senate Of Kenya

Abstract

Live broadcast of parliamentary proceedings is meant to create public awareness on the roles of parliament and the Senate in particular. However, despite the existence of live broadcast of parliamentary proceedings since 2008, the public seems not to understand the role of parliament especially the Senate. This study sought to find out how live broadcast has improved the public’s knowledge on the oversight role of the Senate and to investigate if the live broadcast of parliamentary proceedings has promoted understanding roles of the Senate. The main objective of this study was to investigate the impact of live broadcast of parliamentary proceedings on legislative oversight role of the Senate. The specific objectives are; to find out the impact of live broadcast of parliamentary proceedings on the public knowledge of the legislative oversight role of the Senate, to investigate the influence of live broadcast of the parliamentary proceedings on the execution of the legislative oversight by the Senators and to establish the impact of live broadcast of parliamentary proceedings on audiences’ perceptions and attitudes on overall roles of the Senators. The study was carried out in Nairobi Central Ward. The Gate keeping, Agenda Setting and Media System Dependency theories were used. The researcher used exploratory research design. This study is qualitative which used in-depth interviews and focus group discussions. Qualitative data was collected using fifteen in-depth interviews and four focus group discussions. Purposive sampling was used for data collection. Qualitative data was thematically analyzed and presented using narratives. Findings revealed that an increase in public participation was the major impact. The results also showed that most of the interviewees had a lot of knowledge on parliamentary procedures, knowledge on the duties of a Member of Parliament, and knowledge on Government policies. Moreover, the research findings showed most of the respondents interviewed were very interested in Senate and its work and were satisfied with the performance of the senate. The study concluded that the major impact of live broadcast of parliamentary proceedings was that it enhanced increased public participation in the law making process as enshrined in article 118 of the Constitution of Kenya.