This is the M&E Thursday Talk from Thursday, February 6th, when Althea Middleton-Detzner, Director of Hate Speech at PeaceTech Lab, led a discussion on “How to Monitor and Combat Hate Speech on Social Media.”
Hate speech and dangerous speech are a threat to democratic values, social stability and cohesion, and sustainable peace globally. A significant body of research shows how hate speech and dangerous speech contribute to the dehumanization of targeted groups and can lead to the justification or incitement of acts of violence against them. More recently, there has been heightened realization of the role that social media plays in the speed and scale at which harmful content can spread.
In this webinar, Althea discussed how PeaceTech Lab has pioneered a methodology for identifying and contextualizing offensive and inflammatory language at the country level through the development of hate speech lexicons. Althea also explained the evolution of offline and online hate speech, how to build lexicons, and how they can be used to monitor and combat hate speech.