On 5 October 2022, under the project Social Media for Peace funded by the European Union, UNESCO held a national consultation to reflect on the regulations and practices to address online harmful content in Kenya. The event attracted 47 stakeholders representing the Government, Kenya National Cohesion and Integration Commission, Communications Authority, Media Council of Kenya, civil society organizations as well as the Embassies of Denmark and Sweden, the British High Commission and the European Center for Election Support.
Over the past years, the evolution of technologies has created new vehicles for the spread of harmful content which contributed significantly to the polarization of societies along ethnic, political, religious and gender lines. The recent general elections held in Kenya witnessed the circulation of hate speech, misinformation, disinformation and coordinated inauthentic behavior on social media platforms.
While officially opening the event, the Chief Guest Reverend Dr Samuel Kobia, Chairman of National Cohesion Integration Commission thanked UNESCO for its support and stated: “We identified a lot of video propaganda, as well as 500 cases of hateful content, with Twitter showing the highest numbers, followed by Facebook, What’s app and TikTok.”
Ms Katrin Hagemann, the Deputy Head of the EU Delegation in Kenya stated: “Fact based, fair and balanced information is a key ingredient to counter fake news and manipulative narratives. The European Union via UNESCO has enhanced its engagement with digital platforms, notably social media to tackle the issue of harmful content effectively.”
Ms. Misako Ito, UNESCO Regional Advisor for Information and Communication in Africa in her remarks indicated: “We must continue to reflect on the mechanisms that are being develop by governments, platforms and civil society to respond to hateful content.”
As explained by Ms. Elvi Agunda, Project Manager at UNDP, the lessons learnt on hate speech in Kenya in the context of the 2022 elections were numerous. “There is not only a need for continuous monitoring and analysis, but also for capacity building and fostering partnerships and collaboration. We must also have a continuous awareness campaign engaging the youth, to sensitize them early to the roots of hate speech”.
At the event, key findings and recommendations arising from recent reports commissioned by UNESCO to Build Up and Article 19 on the legal frameworks related to hate speech and the content moderations practices were presented. Among the challenges with content moderation, the platform policies that are applied in a discriminatory manner and remove legitimate content, the low levels of awareness on how to report problematic content along with a lack of technical know-how and capacity to use the internal complaint mechanisms, were highlighted.
Other barriers include the automated decisions that do not consider the local context and languages spoken, and the lack of transparency of the platforms regarding their engagement with the governments.
Which recommendations were given to respond to these key findings? First, that companies should ensure their content rules are sufficiently clear, accessible and in line with international standards on freedom of expression and privacy. Social media companies content rules should be accessible in local languages.
Additionally, companies should be more transparent not only about their decision-making process, but also about putting in place internal complaints mechanisms and publish comprehensive transparency reports including detailed information about content removal requests received based on their Terms of Service.
“We hope that the multi-stakeholder coalition will play a critical role of filling the gap between the realities of local actors and companies that operate on global scale for the oversight of content moderation of their platforms”, concluded Misako Ito.
After a year of its implementation in four countries including Kenya, the “Social Media 4 Peace” project funded by European Union realized milestone achievements, such as strengthening capacities of 1254 young people with practical skills and competencies on Media and Information Literacy to identify and respond to online hate narratives and disinformation.
Another achievement is the capacity-building of 50 young girls with coding skills thus allowing them to develop 3 mobile applications dedicated to peace advocacy and tackling online hate narratives and disinformation.
In the context of the elections and beyond, UNESCO also strengthened capacities of 200 media professionals from 40 institutions them with skills on conflict sensitive reporting and data journalism.
In the second year of the Social Media 4 peace project, UNESCO is set to launch a multi-stakeholder national coalition on freedom of expression and content moderation in Kenya. More details on the coalition to be shared in the next months.
About the Social Media 4 Peace project
The Social Media 4 Peace project is premised on the realization that while digitalization of societies presents opportunities for information flow, digital communication tools have also challenges as they become instrumental for spreading harmful content with a significant impact on conflict dynamics and peace. Through the project, UNESCO seeks to enhance understanding of the root causes, scale and impact of potentially harmful content and of the effectiveness of the tools to address it in the four pilot countries – Kenya, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Indonesia and Colombia.
The project is funded by the European Union and will contribute to the achievement of SDG 16 to promote just, peaceful and inclusive societies. It is also part of the UN Plan of Action on Hate Speech launched by UN Secretary General to combat the online disturbing groundswell of xenophobia, racism and intolerance.