Social Media For Good; What We Can Do as Kenyans

On a chilly Thursday morning I woke up to something interesting on Twitter; a discussion fronted by @PaulaKahumbu CEO of Wildlife Direct. She posed a rather intriguing question and got me tweeting for the next one hour! Social media has changed and continues to shape the way we exchange of information, share content and add to it as well as pass it on and discuss ideas.

In the past we have seen #KOT (Kenyans on Twitter) come together for various good reasons, we had #CarpoolKE, #KOTagainstMpbonus, #PeremendeMovement, #KenyansForKenya, #KOT4Conje among other great initiatives meant for the good of the society.

We’ve also popular TT’s such as #TurkanaOil, #SomeoneTellCNN, #BudgetyaMasuffer, #MiddleClassProblemsKE and customer service oriented #tags; the popular #TwitterBigStick and #TwitterThumbsup. As some of us do well (right, good & social stuff) on social networks some tribalists have been publishing hate messages something DR. Bitange Ndemo has been talking about weekly since late last year in the Wednesday Media Monitoring briefings at the Infocomm Ministry.

Late last year we had #SGSNairobi by UNDP which brought together tech-preneurs & social innovators whose ideas, initiatives and campaign have had massive success and huge positive social impact and we should have more of such events often. (Methinks)

Recently (yesterday) we had #SomeoneTellBotswana, #SomeoneTellCNN & #SomeTellKenya which shows a growing sense of pride in our nation and demonstrates our patriotism. I am more than happy to see the number of hate pages and Twitter handles reduce in Kenya, we managed to pull through the election peacefully with minimal cases of hate tweets and propaganda. What this tells me is Kenyans are now taking social media seriously and it’s time we scaled that up to unlock the full potential on social media.

How about we have weekly sessions on Twitter on to discuss various issues/topics?
Karani Mutonga, CBI 360 and I started #BusinessWedKE; a 1 hour long discussion to share insights, opinions and information related to Biashara and various things affecting the industry sometime late last year but the hashtag didn’t gain traction. We used to invite online panelists to tweet and respond to some questions or give feedback on our topic of the week.
Due to the feedback on Dr. Paula Kahumbu’s #ThinkTank and #PowerHour we could dedicate an hour per week to discuss various topics/issues affecting us. Could be tech, politics, health, governance, corruption, education etc.
For purposes of having something relevant, the tech community can say come use #TechThinkTank, education players can use #EducationThinkTank na watu wa Biashara can have #BizThinkTank in our weekly #PowerHourKE. Or should they be uniform? Remain or use #KEThinkTank? You tell me!

So say this kicks off next week we can maybe start with education, the other week we go to governance or democracy like that et;al. I would also like to volunteer to coordinate the think tank debates/ chats, to come up with topics in partnership with players in different industries and raise them for discussion every Thursday 9 am to 10:00 am.

Well if you have any contribution to this post please follow me @KenyanMarketer & share your response with me and other #KOT.

Is Monitoring Social Media The Only Solution GoK has to Hate Speech #OnlineKE?

Is monitoring social media rather reactionary and tiresome? Set up keywords to monitor, track conversations, identify frequent sources of ‘hate speech, curate content or the evidence, move on to arrest these perpetrators…does that sound like a 3 hour job to you? Due to the viral nature of social media, sticky content spreads very fast. By sticky I mean emotional content that is either positive or negative! Not NEUTRAL! So if the initiative below seeks to prevent a possible PEV then they cannot do it! People will share pics of violence while asking others to stop….what that does is we all start preaching peace while preparing for WAR because we can see what’s happening elsewhere. Mashada.com was shut down last week for the same reasons….but my question is, does shutting down the platform gag the users? Does it mute them? NO! They move into other platforms with their aliases and continue with spreading inflammatory content.

 I conceptualized a campaign dubbed “I am A SocialPRO” to raise awareness, public advocacy; promote responsible & ethical ways of engaging online and education on social media. Therefore this campaign seeks to promote responsible ways of engaging on social media, sensitize content creators on legal risks of creating and sharing content that is inflammatory and full of hate as well as educate Kenyans on social media etiquette and ethical ways of communicating online for societal good. Here’s what  I tweeted and the response I got!

 

Here’s an article on the Sunday Nation, read through and do let me know what you think is the right, most viable and efficient to reducing the ‘hate speech’ on social media.

New project to check hate speech on Facebook, Twitter

Be careful what you tweet, update on your Facebook account or write on your blog.

An online monitoring project has been trawling websites, blogs and the social media for hate speech in the past four months ahead of the March 4, 2013 elections.

The Umati project, an initiative of technology incubator, iHub, and software developer, Ushahidi, aims to monitor and report dangerous postings online by Kenyans to the authorities.

Ms Angela Crandall, the research manager at iHub, said five monitors are at the firm’s research centre.

“We have people who in addition to mastery of English understand Dholuo, Kalenjin, Kikuyu, Luhya, Swahili and Sheng,” said Ms Crandall, who has been working at iHub since 2011.

“We once toyed with the idea of using computer software, but much content was in vernacular and it was difficult to develop software to interpret this.”

The monitors follow opinion and political leaders from different communities and collect data from Twitter, Facebook, blog posts and comments on online newspapers.

The data is then categorised as offensive speech (lowest level), moderately dangerous speech or extremely dangerous speech (highest level).

Ms Crandall told the Sunday Nation that Umati shares the reports it develops with different partners including the police, National Cohesion and Integration Commission and the civil society. They are also in contact with the ministry of Communication as well as electoral commission.

These sites have gained massive popularity since the last General Election, a period when radio stations and mobile phones were the main mediums used to perpetrate hatred.

In contrast to 2007 when there was no systematic monitoring of the Kenyan online environment, Umati is trying to ensure that it captures the trending topics, phrases, and sentiments especially in this campaign period.

“We are aware of the influence that new media had on the 2008 post-election violence in Kenya and this is why we are undertaking this project,” says Crandall.

But why “dangerous speech” and not “hate speech?”

The National Cohesion and Integration Commission Act of 2008 says hate speech is “speech that advocates or encourages violent acts against a specific group, and creates a climate of hate or prejudice which may, in turn, foster the commission of hate crimes”.

The Umati monitors, however, particularly go after “dangerous speech” or “speech that has a potential to cause violence”.

“The definition that NCIC has for hate speech is vague and leaves room for different interpretations,” said Ms Crandall.

“Dangerous speech” is borrowed from Prof Susan Benesch, an academic who studies the role of inflammatory speech in catalysing collective violence around the world.

Ms Crandall said that inflammatory speech is still rife in the Kenyan online space.

“We have found more dangerous speech than we expected,” she said.

As a result, Umati is now working with online thought leaders such as bloggers to quickly counter the results of this.

Umati is also working with Ushahidi to host free and open events and trainings on dangerous speech and how to diminish its effects.

 

Video: Where do great ideas come from?

One of our most innovative, popular thinkers takes on-in exhilarating style-one of our key questions:

With Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson pairs the insight of his bestselling Everything Bad Is Good for You and the dazzling erudition of The Ghost Map and The Invention of Air to address an urgent and universal question: What sparks the flash of brilliance? How does groundbreaking innovation happen? Answering in his infectious, culturally omnivorous style, using his fluency in fields from neurobiology to popular culture, Johnson provides the complete, exciting, and encouraging story of how we generate the ideas that push our careers, our lives, our society, and our culture forward.

Beginning with Charles Darwin’s first encounter with the teeming ecosystem of the coral reef and drawing connections to the intellectual hyperproductivity of modern megacities and to the instant success of YouTube, Johnson shows us that the question we need to ask is, What kind of environment fosters the development of good ideas? His answers are never less than revelatory, convincing, and inspiring as Johnson identifies the seven key principles to the genesis of such ideas, and traces them across time and disciplines.
Most exhilarating is Johnson’s conclusion that with today’s tools and environment, radical innovation is extraordinarily accessible to those who know how to cultivate it. Where Good Ideas Come From is essential reading for anyone who wants to know how to come up with tomorrow’s great ideas.

The Launch Of SocialPRO (Social Media) Clubs In Kenya.

The growth of social media in business and communication in Kenya has necessitated Social Edge Africa to spearhead the formation of social media clubs in universities. The Ministry of Information and Communication endorsed the initiative and on Thursday 25th of October 2012 we launched SocialPRO clubs and a new campaign to promote responsible & ethical use of Social Media at the UoN; Lower Kabete Campus. The Guest of Honour was Dr. Bitange Ndemo, other guest speakers include;
Cynthia Nyamai- TV personality
Maryann Michuki- Social Media Manager-Safaricom
Sriram Bharatam-Founder of Kuza Biashara
Doreen Waithera – CEO MSK
Evans Muriu-Wanadamu Initiative
Muthuri Kinyamu- Social Edge Africa
Kennedy Gathu-Lari Smart Villages
Calvin Nyakundi- Discussion on online freedom moderated by Cherrie of KBC.
According to the 24 year old Muthuri Kinyamu, the founder and business director at Social Edge Africa, “The core objective of these clubs is to teach, educate, create awareness and impart knowledge & skills of various disciplines of social media and platforms to the university students”.

The initiative seeks to develop a talent pool of graduates with a solid understanding of new media to bridge the knowledge gap and demand there is today for people with skills and expertise in various disciplines of social media especially.

These clubs in a nutshell will unlock the potential on social media to the students, expose them to the limitless possibilities online and help faculty integrate various social media networking sites to teaching to ease content sharing and make learning more fun. The faculty will also learn how to create, optimize and share digital content in various formats with students across various platforms as well as help them embrace new media and thus use it to connect, engage and gain valuable feedback from the students. Through these clubs the faculty shall establish processes that control the publishing and monitoring of their content online & globally.