For nine months, between September 2012 and May 2013, Ushahidi teamed up with iHub Research to create Umati (Swahili for "crowd") - a media monitoring project that collects and examines multi-lingual incidences of hate and dangerous speech in the Kenyan online space.
As a close to the first phase of the project, we hereby release the final report, which discusses Umati's main findings, offers a methodology for online media monitoring that can be replicated in other countries and contexts, and provides a basis for further research.
Some of the findings, which are discussed at greater length in this report, include:
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The occurence of online hate speech cannot solely be relied on as a precursor to violence on the ground.
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Most Kenyans online prefer to converse in English, Kiswahili, Sheng or Kenyan English slang. There were very few hate speech statements that were purely in vernacular.
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KOT cuffing contributed to having only 3% of total comments from Twitter, while 90% were from Facebook.
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There is a huge disparity between what the public perceives as hate speech and what the Umati project defines it as.
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The Benesch framework offered a good basis for the definition of dangerous speech. Umati went a step further to refine the definition to suit the Kenyan context.
Click here to access the full report.
We thank you for your support and feedback throughout the project, and look forward to contributing to further research in this area.
Best,
Umati, iHub Research and Ushahidi.
