The research found that despite laudable efforts by local civil society to combat hate speech online, there has been a rise in online hate speech driven particularly by politicians and political operatives during elections that are increasingly reliant on online campaigning. This interacts with the power of multinational technology firms which own the dominant social media platforms, and their often opaque processes of content moderation, which ultimately leads to impunity for online hate speech. To address this, change is needed in several domains to create an environment conducive to preventing the use of hate speech and its associated harms …