The Twitter account of Kenya’s Presidential Press Service – Uhuru Kenyatta’s official newswire – has not posted a single Tweet despite being launched two months ago.
@ppskenya, created at the same time as the State House of Kenya Twitter account, has 3,245 followers, including high ranking government officials, CEOs and journalists, and follows 92 people, comprising mostly of local and international press.
Despite this huge following the account has zero Tweets to date.
This is compared to the State House account which has tweeted 109 times, mostly detailing the president’s routine as well as being used as an avenue to channel press releases and pictures.
According to many socialites the clashing roles of the account with that of State House and Kenyatta’s personal account one may be to blame.
Social media strategist Edwin Karuga believes this duplication of roles could be an explanation to the dormancy.
He said: “Of course the @StateHouseKenya and @UKenyatta seem to be performing the roles of PPS when it comes to Twitter, hence this could have led to the decision by the PPS to take a step back rather than risk colliding with the two.
“Another explanation is that Uhuru Kenyatta could still be using his election team, although there were rumours that blogger and socialite Dennis Itumbi would be heading to the PPS and would have of course boosted the account’s presence.”
For now Kenyans on Twitter, as well as other international followers, remain disappointed at the seemingly diminished presence of the PPS.
However, despite the back office role by the PPS, who now seem to be in charge of delivery of press releases and audio visual material for traditional media, many journalists will believe reliable information is now trickling out of State House much faster.
