In both academic and popular discourses, there has been much talk of a mobile revolution in Kenya. Yet how revolutionary has this been for women? The aim of this chapter is to explore how women’s mobile phone usage is related to the negotiation of gender roles in everyday life and how and in what situations mobile phones can empower women. The data was gathered in Uasin Gishu County, an area which is predominantly rural but also home to the city of Eldoret and its surrounding peri-urban areas. The living situation differs widely for women in rural, peri-urban, and urban areas, which influences women’s appropriation of mobile phones. The chapter is based on 30 semi-structured interviews with Kenyan women and asks: how do Kenyan women in rural, peri-urban, and urban areas use mobile phones? When and how do mobile phones empower Kenyan women?

This article, by partly adopting a historical perspective, examines the introduction of new media in a Kenyan rural village, Kapkoi, and how it changes the communication ecology in the village. Further it explores how people in Kapkoi use and ascribe meaning to media. The article argues that categories such as gender, age and financial situation influence people's access to and use of media and demonstrates how media use can simultaneously reinforce and challenge power structures. Moreover, it highlights the clear digital divide between rural areas and urban centres, and yet suggests that the introduction of new media is partly owing to the connection between the urban and the rural and that media and communications technologies sustain and increase the connectedness of the local.

This article explores how increased media access and use influences Kenyan women’s everyday life and alters the domestic space. Based on 30 in-depth interviews with women in Uasin Gishu County, Kenya, the article demonstrates that women have incorporated newly gained media into their daily lives and routines. Increased media access has opened up the home and turned the domestic sphere from a secluded place into a connected space in which women can receive input from,connect with and interact with the world beyond their immediate surroundings whilst simultaneously remaining at homeand fulfilling their traditional gender roles. Women’s media use thus reinforces their connection to the domestic sphereand the gendered division of labour. Although it has the potential to challenge gender inequalities, the extent to which this occurs depends on the individual woman’s ability to act on the imagin aries and ideas that media carry.

This editorial introduces the thematic issue of “Media and Communication between the Local and the Global”. It does so first by presenting the origin of this thematic issue: the Media, Globalization and Social Change division at the NordMedia2017 conference. The thematic issue is then anchored theoretically through discussion of the widely conceived notion of mediation as a technological, symbolic and ethical process―highlighting the interest in how media actors and communication technologies, practices and artefacts mediate between global phenomena and local contexts, which is what unites the contributions to this thematic issue. Last, the final section of this editorial introduces the articles, which coalesce around three broad themes: migration, marginalised communities, and consumption.