| dc.description.abstract | The 21st century has witnessed considerable research on social media. This study aims at contributing to the knowledge of social media research by analyzing political discourse on social media using a relevance-theoretic perspective. In particular it examines the political discourse conducted by selected candidates on the Twitter platform during the 2013 Kenyan presidential campaigns. The study sought to determine the communicative intention in selected candidates‟ utterances on Twitter during the 2013 Kenyan presidential campaigns. By means of a methodology of qualitative content analysis, the study found that the presidential candidates‟ tweets could be classified into the inherent prevailing themes namely: voting, peace, corruption, economy, devolution, change, technology and social interactive tweets. The contesting candidates through the use of explicit and implicit strategies, expressed their positions on various issues of national importance, the main goal being to influence the citizens to take action and vote for the candidate in question. It was found that social interactive tweets and the tweets on the agenda of voting and peace were the most explicit in passing the speakers intended messages whereas the tweets on devolution and economy were stated rather implicitly. The candidates employed indirect criticisms towards the regime of the day in order to discredit it and create the need for new leadership. The social-political context among others was seen to greatly enhance the communicative intention of the analyzed utterances | en_US |
