Global hate speech database up and running

The Sentinal Project, an organisiation that works to combine genocide research information technology and risk management to prevent genocide, have released a new database to help the process.

Hatebase, a new crowd sourced database of multilingual hate speech, will create a bank of words and phrases that researchers can use to detect early stages of genocide. Users will be able to log on to the website and add examples of hate speech that they come across in their communities or online.

Highlighting the importance of  unveiling prevalent hate speech around the world, executive director of The Sentinal Project, told Wired,

How many people outside of Sri Lanka know that ‘sakkiliya’ is a Sinhala term used to refer to a Tamil person as ‘a very unhygienic or uncultured person’. Hatebase helps us to know what to look for and to make sense of what we see.”

“Hatebase gives us a reference point for what we should be listening for, picking that signal out of the noise, and then quantifying it. The real trick is to then connect those hate speech trends with other real-world phenomena.

Contributions to the Hatebase database can be made here.

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