Umati Final Report Released

A project by iHub Research and Ushahidi, Umati was born out of the influence social media was seen to have had on the 2007/8 post election violence. The Umati project sought to identify and understand the use of dangerous speech in the Kenyan online space. The goals of the project were:

1. To propose both a workable definition of hate speech and a contextualized methodology for online hate speech tracking, that can be replicated locally and in other countries.
2. To collect and monitor the occurrence of hate speech in the Kenyan online space.
3. To forward any distress calls the Umati team came across online, e.g. on Twitter and Facebook, to Uchaguzi (www.uchaguzi.com). Uchaguzi is a technology-based system that enables citizens to report and keep an eye on election-related events on the ground.
4. To further education on the possible outcomes of hate speech, so as to promote civil communication and interaction in both online and offline spaces.