Factors affecting hate speech control for peace building in Kenyan social media. A case of Kenyan bloggers
Abstract
According to statistics of The Agrigator, which is Africa’s main blog aggregator website, Kenya
has the third largest number of blogs in Africa led by South Africa then Nigeria with an
approximate number of 9,183 and 1,351 respectively with Kenya having an approximate of 739
blogs. Blogs are emerging as sources of vital information from breaking news, politics, analysis
and commentaries to personal diaries and gossip. Blogs do not come without risks to hate speech
propagation due to its real time nature, anonymity and freedom of speech to both the blogger and
the subscriber. This study investigated hate speech control for peace building in Kenyan social
media. A case of Kenyan bloggers. It was based on three objectives hate speech monitoring and
control tools, hate speech sensitization and hate speech laws. The studies theoretical framework
was guided byJeremy Waldon’s systematic framework for legal regulation of hate speech. First,
he argues that the "harm" associated with "hate speech" has nothing to do with the motives of the
speaker, and everything to do with the message conveyed and the damage that message does in a
democratic society predicated on equal citizenship. Second, Waldron argues that written
defamation matters much more than the spoken word. As he puts it, "libel is much more serious
because the imputations it embodies take a more permanent form. Research design applied was
descriptive where data was collected using structured questionnaire and analyzed both
qualitatively and quantitatively. The target population comprised of bloggers in Kenya that
included 85 bloggers listed in 18 categories out of which a sample of 70 bloggers were selected
through stratification of 18 stratas and random sampling was done for each strata. A
questionnaire was used to collect data while statistical package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was
used to analyze data. According to the findings, majority of the respondents disagreed with the
monitoring and control tools used to monitor hate speech at 47.6% while 42.37% advocate for
context analysis of flagged speech before being branded as hate speech. More than half of the
respondents at 52.54% did not agree to removal of content by commercial internet service
providers hence there was a small positive correlation between hate speech monitoring and
control tools and hate speech control. Majority of the respondents strongly agreed and agreed at
an average of 34%.11 and 35.59 % respectively and only 6.57% of the responses were strongly
disagreed to level of hate speech sensitization. 69.49% agreed to understand what constitutes
hate speech hence a strong correlation between sensitization and hate speech control. There was
a general mixed reaction to questions regarding use of law to control hate speech in Kenyan
social media 30.08% of the respondents agreed while 31.76% of the respondents disagreed hence
an indication the correlation between the two variables as a moderate positive correlation. The
Key recommendations of the study is that there should be clear definitions of what constitutes
hate speech and ‘causing annoyance’ as grounds for taking legal action against individuals and
the circumstances and laws under which individuals are charged over their online activities
should be clarified.
Publisher
University of Nairobi
Collections
- Faculty of Education (FEd) [5964]