Use of regular expressions for multi-lingual detection of hate speech in Kenya

Abstract

Hate speech has of late become a sensitive issue in Kenya given that it helped trigger the post election violence of 2007/2008. At the same time, the percentage of the populace that has internet access has continued to grow giving rise to an active online community whose activity is scarcely monitored. The current detection of these hate messages is manual as it mostly relies on what is captured on the media or text that an online user happens to flag. Given that bloggers have come under investigation for the content they post online shows