On Wednesday October 30th, The Media and Peacebuilding Project (MPP) at GW’s School of Media and Public Affairs (SMPA) held its third workshop of the year on hate speech analysis and remedies. The first part of the workshop featured a presentation by Althea Middleton-Detzner (Director, PeaceTech Lab) on the Lab’s work on Hate Speech Lexicons from around the world. 

These lexicons are locally-sourced lists of hate speech words and phrases from conflict-fragile areas such as South Sudan and Iraq. Some applications of the lexicons include monitoring online hate speech, informing local journalists about the hate speech they might currently be using, informative workshops with strategies that people can use in their communities to reduce hate speech, and hate speech education in schools. PeaceTech Lab is also working on a layman's hate speech guide. This guide will be adapted in different contexts and better prepare any actor to prevent and address hate speech in order to prevent violent escalation. 

During the second hour of the workshop, a round-table discussion was held on the intersection between quantitative and qualitative data in conducting research on hate speech. The discussion involved academics and practitioners working on different hate speech research and remediation implementation projects. The MPP project at SMPA plans to hold monthly workshops on hate speech analysis and remedies for the rest of the 2019/20 academic year.