Power, Technology and Gambling: An Actor-Network Theory Analysis of Online Sports Betting in Kenya

This thesis investigates how online sports betting is assembled as an industry and as a social practice in Kenya. Using Actor-Network Theory (ANT), it examines the emergence and continual (re)formation of companies, the regulator and consumers, as power moves through the network, conducted and transformed by artifacts, creating the “black box” of the betting industry.

An interdisciplinary study of technology and society, it questions the nature of punter autonomy within a highly technologically-mediated consumption environment. Beginning with the notion that gambling consumption and production are inextricably intertwined through artifacts, where punter behaviours are inscribed in marketing technologies and embedded in game design, this study examines both sides as one, continuous, complex, translation of power. This was investigated using a multi-site ethnography in Nairobi, collecting heterogenous data from a wide variety of sources, resulting in insights on company strategies, regulator policies, consumer behaviours and technological features. It was then processed into a series of narratives which explore the design, build, regulation, marketing and consumption of products.

The thesis proposes a spatialisation of ANT, a key theoretical contribution, developing an approach to examining space relationally in order to better critique the material world implications of virtual technologies, and the creation of virtual-physical spaces through artifacts. It also provides new knowledge on gambling production, as a rare study of corporate and regulatory actors within the industry. It concludes by advocating for the application of ANT to situations shaped by artificial intelligence, arguing that this vintage lens provides a fresh and relevant approach to critiquing the lively sources of machinic agency that shape the modern world.