Role of Community Radio in Demystifying Climate Change Concepts; the Challenges in Disseminating Information at Tulwoob Koony (TK) Radio in Mt Elgon, Kenya

Abstract

Climate change has been a pressing global issue, and Kenya, in particular, is highly vulnerable to its effects. Even though there are many forums where climate change is being discussed and debated, the discussions remain among the elites. A significant percentage of people from rural areas still lag in understanding the concept of climate change because of the complexity of scientific information about climate change. This paper examines the role of community radio in demystifying these concepts and terminologies during the dissemination process. It first examines the presenters’ knowledge and ability to explain climate change concepts clearly and accurately in local dialects. Secondly, it also evaluates the listeners' knowledge of the targeted climate change concepts disseminated by Tulwoob Koony Radio and lastly, establish the major linguistic and communicative barriers in passing climate change information to Tulwoob Koony radio listeners. The paper adopts the linguistic and communicative theories of translation and the knowledge-gap theory. These theories are relevant because they point out the need to package content to local contexts and Language well understood by the audience to bridge the existing knowledge and use storytelling and relatable examples. The paper employes use qualitative and quantitative approaches to collect data. Tulwoob Koony radio is purposively sampled because Mt. Elgon is the primary water catchment area and the source of many rivers that flow downwards through Western parts of Kenya to Lake Victoria. The findings will help community radios to address challenges associated with disseminating scientific information in their local languages.