Today ABC research fellow Dr. Eugenia Siapera hosted a seminar on racist hate speech in social media. The seminar was part of a wider project called Hate Track which is concerned with identifying the various forms of online racist hate speech, and constructing a computational tool that can track such contents on public Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. The project has identified a gap in relevant research and policy, in that most research tends to focus on racist hate speech emanating from organised or semi-organised groups, thereby overlooking ‘ambient hate’ of various intensities that circulates in social media; these may require different policy responses.
ABC’s Dr. James O’Higgins Norman also participated in the seminar during a round-table discussion on ‘Identifying and understanding online racism and hate speech: old and new challenges’.
