Cardiff University researchers are to monitor Brexit-related hate crime on Twitter with funding from the Economic and Social Research Council
Cardiff University’s Social Data Science Lab is to open a Centre for Cyberhate Research and Policy to explore and monitor Brexit-related hate crimes on social media and help the government identify areas that require attention, and improve interventions to keep hate crime from spreading online.
The university has been awarded a £250,000 grant by the Economic and Social Research Council to support the work, which will focus on the development of a monitoring tool to display a live feed of the propagation of hate speech on Twitter.
“Hate crimes have been shown to cluster in time and tend to increase, sometimes significantly, in the aftermath of trigger events,” said Matthew Williams, co-director of the Social Data Science Lab, and principal investigator on the project.
“The referendum on the UK’s future in the European Union has galvanised certain prejudiced opinions held by a minority of people, resulting in a spate of hate crimes. Many of these crimes are taking place on social media.
“Over the coming period of uncertainty relating to the form of the UK’s exit, decision makers – particularly those responsible for minimising the risk of social disorder through community reassurance, local policing and online governance – will require near-real-time information on the likelihood of escalation of hateful content spread on social media.
