Strategic Response to Corporate Misinformation in Kenya's Digital Publics: An Integrative Framework for Encrypted-Platform Environments

Abstract

This article develops an integrative conceptual framework for strategic corporate misinformation response in Kenya’s encrypted-platform, multilingual digital environment. While misinformation scholarship has predominantly focused on public health and electoral processes, corporate misinformation, including artificial-intelligence-driven brand impersonation, viral fake recruitment advertisements, product-smearing hoaxes, and executive deepfakes, presents distinct reputational, financial, and legal threats that existing crisis-communication frameworks inadequately address. Using a structured conceptual review and illustrative case analysis, the article synthesises situational crisis communication theory, information disorder theory, diffusion and two-step flow theory, and inoculation theory with recent scholarship on dark participation and Global South media ecosystems. Analysis of five documented Kenyan cases from 2024 to 2026 informs the proposed framework. The article advances four falsifiable theoretical propositions and introduces the ADRA framework, comprising four sequential phases: Anticipate, Detect, Respond, and Adapt. It conceptualises WhatsApp’s limited visibility to external observers as a design constraint and prioritises channel-matched, multilingual, interpersonally mediated corrective communication over broadcast denial. The article contributes an integrated theoretical framework for corporate misinformation response in encrypted-platform environments in the Global South and advances propositions for subsequent empirical testing.