Media, Power, and Depoliticization: A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Koko Networks Closure in Kenya

Abstract

The closure of Koko Networks, a clean cooking fuel company operating in low-income urban settlements in Kenya, provides a case for examining how media discourse constructed the energy transition and its political implications in Global South contexts. Widely framed as a climate technology innovation aligned with market-led sustainability and the global decarbonization agenda, Koko’s shutdown exposed the fragility of privatized approaches to essential services. This paper employed Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), drawing on Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework, to analyze how Kenyan media represented the closure and structured its political meaning. The study analyzed a corpus of four publicly available digital media texts from major Kenyan outlets focusing on linguistic and discursive features, including lexical choice, modality, agency attribution, nominalization, and sourcing patterns. It further situated these discursive practices within the political economy of media by considering how reliance on elite sources and institutional logics shaped news production. The findings showed that media discourse predominantly framed the closure through market and regulatory logics, presenting it as a consequence of financial nonviability and policy misalignment. Discursive strategies such as nominalization and passivization obscured decision-making authority, while elite actors, including investors and policymakers, were privileged as authoritative voices. In contrast, affected communities were largely represented as aggregated consumers rather than political subjects. The findings showed that media discourse did not merely report the closure but participated in the depoliticization of the energy transition by obscuring decision-making authority, privileging elite actors, and limiting the articulation of alternative political claims.