articlePolicy & InternetApr 22, 2015HYBRID OA

Cyber Hate Speech on Twitter: An Application of Machine Classification and Statistical Modeling for Policy and Decision Making

PBPete BurnapMWMatthew Williams

Oxfam · Malden Public Schools · +1 more institution

Indexed incrossref

Abstract

The use of “Big Data” in policy and decision making is a current topic of debate. The 2013 murder of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich, London, UK led to an extensive public reaction on social media, providing the opportunity to study the spread of online hate speech (cyber hate) on Twitter. Human annotated Twitter data was collected in the immediate aftermath of Rigby's murder to train and test a supervised machine learning text classifier that distinguishes between hateful and/or antagonistic responses with a focus on race, ethnicity, or religion; and more general responses. Classification features were derived from the content of each tweet, including grammatical dependencies between words to recognize…

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591
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2

Topics & keywords

Topics
Keywords
  • Computer science
  • Classifier (UML)
  • Artificial intelligence
  • Machine learning
  • Binary classification
  • Social media
  • Support vector machine
  • Natural language processing
UN Sustainable Development Goals
  • Reduced inequalities
  • Peace, Justice and strong institutions
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