A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF ‘BREATH OF HEAVEN’ OF HOPE F.M AND ‘UTEO’ OF RADIO SALAAM PROGRAMMES AND THEIR EFFECTS ON CHRISTIAN-MUSLIM RELATIONS IN MOMBASA COUNTY, KENYA

Abstract

This study compared two selected programs in Frequency Modulation (FM) stations, one, Christian, ‘Breath of Heaven’ of Hope FM and another, Muslim, ‘Uteo, of Radio Salaam. This study focused on the role of Muslim and Christian media stations in Mombasa County. The project therefore compared these two selected programs and assessed their effects on Christians-Muslim relations in Mombasa County. The City of Mombasa is faced with security problems arising out of the current developments, political and religious, which have threatened to build up new attitudes of mistrust and resentment between Christians and Muslims. Thus, Mombasa offers an insightful setting to engage in comparative analysis of these two weekly programs in order to explore the (re)construction of Christian and Muslim biases in the Mombasa media. The objectives of the study were: to explain the history of the two selected radio stations within the media network of Kenya, and to show why Christians and Muslims listen to these FM radio stations in Mombasa County. I also wanted to find out the effects of the two programs on Christians-Muslims relation in Mombasa County. I divided the research into three chapters. The first chapter brought out the discussion and described the background to the research locating it within Mombasa City. This chapter also contained the statement of the problem, the purpose of the research, research objectives, questions, hypotheses, justification and significance, scope and limitations of the study. Chapter two describes the literature review, brief history of the media in Kenya and that of radio Salaam and Hope FM, Radio in Kenya and the importance of radio in Kenya. The chapter also gives what Christian-Muslim relation is all about, before giving a short history of the coming of the Christians and Muslims in Mombasa County in East Africa. Theoretical frame work and the conceptual frame work came final. Chapter three explains the methodology used in this study. Chapter four gave the presentation of the data and how it was analyzed. In this research the data was analyzed by first summarizing the key findings and noting down the frequent responses in the focus group discussions and responses from the interviews given by the informants. The study agreed with the hypotheses that ‘Breath of Heaven’ of Hope F.M and ‘Uteo’ of Radio Salaam programs affect Christian-Muslim relations positively. The programs make Christians and Muslims live peacefully and harmoniously in Mombasa County. The two programs play a watchdog role in the County. The effects brought about by the two programs were indicated thematically.