10/30/19

Workshop on Hate Speech Analysis and Remedies

Althea Middleton-Detzner, the Director of PeaceTech Lab, presents the Lab's work.

Participants engage in another productive workshop.

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.

5/29/19

Workshop on Defining, Monitoring, and Countering Hate Speech

Professor Neil Johnson from GW's Physics Department presents findings on social media cluster dynamics and their relation to global hate speech.

Professor Babak Bahador of the Media and Peacebuilding Project explains the Hate Speech Intensity Scale to workshop participants.

The Media and Peacebuilding Project hosted a workshop on defining, monitoring and countering hate speech on May 29 at GW’s School of Media and Public Affairs (SMPA), bringing together researchers and experts to discuss a set of key questions.

Participants presented findings from their respective projects and shared insight on questions such as:

How do we define speech that is hateful and dangerous?

How do we detect and monitor such hate/dangerous speech?

How do we respond to and counter such speech?

Presenters included researchers from the Media and Peacebuilding Project, Professor Neil Johnson from GW Physics and team, Christian Strippel from the NoHate Project from Germany, Rachel Brown from Over Zero, Cathy Buerger from the Dangerous Speech Project, and Vasu Mohan from the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES).

Thanks to all who participants and we look forward to hosting more deep-dive workshops on hate speech, counter speech and peacebuilding.