Administrators of three Facebook pages, accused of spreading hate messages in Kenya, are being tracked down by the Kenyan government.

This is according to Kenya’s director of public communication Mary Ombara, speaking at a briefing in Nairobi yesterday where she named the pages.

The pages, which have over 4,000 followers each, are ‘Luo Nation’, ‘RIP Citizen TV’ and ‘Nyanza si Kenya’.

"The pages perpetuate ethnic economic sabotage, messages of ethnic stereotypes and ethnic murder. As of now the national steering committee on media monitoring reassures the country that we are doing everything possible to track down the origins of the hate speech bloggers," Ombara said.

Ombara added that despite attempting to track down the administrators of these pages, hate speech levels in Kenya are ‘decreasing’. She did not, though, provide any figures to back up this claim.

However, last week, a study by Nairobi technology centre iHub and crowdsourcing company Ushahidi said that levels of online hate speech doubled from February to March, especially in light of the lead up to the Kenyan elections.

Concerns about hate speech are high in the country, especially following ethnic violence that rocked Kenya’s 2007/8 elections. A disputed presidential race between front-runners Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga at the time divided the country.

But Ombara said that a proposed ‘Independent Communications Commission of Kenya Bill’ may help the Kenyan government to ‘monitor’ internet and broadcast channels more effectively.

Government officials further plan to work closely with Kenya police to monitor and prosecute perpetrators of hate speech during and after the just concluded general elections.