scholarly journals Detecting and Monitoring Hate Speech in Twitter

Sensors ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (21) ◽  
pp. 4654 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Carlos Pereira-Kohatsu ◽  
Lara Quijano-Sánchez ◽  
Federico Liberatore ◽  
Miguel Camacho-Collados

Social Media are sensors in the real world that can be used to measure the pulse of societies. However, the massive and unfiltered feed of messages posted in social media is a phenomenon that nowadays raises social alarms, especially when these messages contain hate speech targeted to a specific individual or group. In this context, governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are concerned about the possible negative impact that these messages can have on individuals or on the society. In this paper, we present HaterNet, an intelligent system currently being used by the Spanish National Office Against Hate Crimes of the Spanish State Secretariat for Security that identifies and monitors the evolution of hate speech in Twitter. The contributions of this research are many-fold: (1) It introduces the first intelligent system that monitors and visualizes, using social network analysis techniques, hate speech in Social Media. (2) It introduces a novel public dataset on hate speech in Spanish consisting of 6000 expert-labeled tweets. (3) It compares several classification approaches based on different document representation strategies and text classification models. (4) The best approach consists of a combination of a LTSM+MLP neural network that takes as input the tweet’s word, emoji, and expression tokens’ embeddings enriched by the tf-idf, and obtains an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.828 on our dataset, outperforming previous methods presented in the literature.

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 152
Author(s):  
Rizaldi Parani ◽  
Astrid Pramesuari ◽  
Daffa Muhammad Maldiva ◽  
Edlyn Felicia

The phenomenon of post-truth appears, in which a view believed to be true is inverted and made contradictory as a new form of truth. This phenomenon appears to occur in several countries such as the United States, North Korea, the Philippines and also Indonesia. This can be seen from various actions carried out by radical organizations that question the values of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika with the desire to change these values by referring to religious values. This activity is increasingly growing in terms of followers, and further builds up on the blasphemy case accusations towards former Jakarta Governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama.This research focuses on how the social media has an influence in expanding the spread of hoaxes and hate speech as an effort to destabilize the values of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika. Information and data were obtained from interviews with mass organizations often labeled radical, non-governmental organizations and social observers.The results of this study confirm the need for capacity building both in the form of media literacy and also the socialization of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika values through social institutions and the Government. This is intended to create strong social capital, especially in fostering a sense of trust in the context of a pluralist society in Indonesia.Keywords: Post truth, Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, Social Media, Social Capital, Trust.


Electronics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 1332
Author(s):  
Hong Fan ◽  
Wu Du ◽  
Abdelghani Dahou ◽  
Ahmed A. Ewees ◽  
Dalia Yousri ◽  
...  

Social media has become an essential facet of modern society, wherein people share their opinions on a wide variety of topics. Social media is quickly becoming indispensable for a majority of people, and many cases of social media addiction have been documented. Social media platforms such as Twitter have demonstrated over the years the value they provide, such as connecting people from all over the world with different backgrounds. However, they have also shown harmful side effects that can have serious consequences. One such harmful side effect of social media is the immense toxicity that can be found in various discussions. The word toxic has become synonymous with online hate speech, internet trolling, and sometimes outrage culture. In this study, we build an efficient model to detect and classify toxicity in social media from user-generated content using the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT). The BERT pre-trained model and three of its variants has been fine-tuned on a well-known labeled toxic comment dataset, Kaggle public dataset (Toxic Comment Classification Challenge). Moreover, we test the proposed models with two datasets collected from Twitter from two different periods to detect toxicity in user-generated content (tweets) using hashtages belonging to the UK Brexit. The results showed that the proposed model can efficiently classify and analyze toxic tweets.


Author(s):  
Mete Yildiz ◽  
Kamil Demirhan

This chapter examines the social media use by local governments, and other policy actors (government agencies, non-governmental organizations and citizens) after the 2011 Van Earthquake in Turkey. This study is different from others examining social media use of just one policy actor after a disaster; as it compares and contrasts the performance of different policy actors with that of local governments. To this end, contents of the messages posted on selected Facebook pages after the earthquake are analyzed. The findings include examples of effective social media use for disaster relief and recovery, as well as detailed information about the nature and functioning of “multiple/parallel systems of public service/information delivery”, more than one electronic channel of communication and coordination simultaneously connecting people and organizations. The findings suggest that, if institutional arrangements conducive to collaborations are present, social media platforms can be effective means of disaster relief and recovery, especially for communication among citizens after a disaster.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 90-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Yawo Atiase ◽  
Yong Wang ◽  
Samia Mahmood

Financial non-governmental organizations (FNGOs) are regulated microfinance institutions that operate with a social welfare logic in the delivery of microcredit to the financially excluded in Ghana. The microcredit is aimed at supporting the financially excluded individuals to create sustainable micro and small enterprises (MSEs) for the generation of both skilled and unskilled employment. From the institutional theory perspective, this study aims at investigating the impact of microcredit provided by FNGOs on employment growth among MSEs in Ghana. The major contribution of this study is the fact that, there is a little study on FNGOs and their impact on employment growth in the Ghanaian context. Therefore, this is one of the few studies that highlights the role of FNGOs in promoting financial inclusion through the provision of microcredit for employment generation purposes. Through a multiple regression analysis, the study uses primary data collected from 506 MSEs in Ghana. The results show that microcredit which is flexible in repayment mode, accessible and adequate has a positive impact on employment generation among MSEs in Ghana. However, the current cost of microcredit in Ghana has a negative impact on employment growth among MSEs.


Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 775 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juana Alonso-Cañadas ◽  
Federico Galán-Valdivieso ◽  
Laura Saraite-Sariene ◽  
María del Carmen Caba-Perez

The number of people worldwide without access to safe drinking water or adequate sanitation is an unresolved and growing concern, with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) playing an important role in mitigating the effects of water shortage. These organizations utilize the communication mechanisms at their disposal, such as social media, to help spread their social message and to achieve the commitment of society to their cause. In this context and based on dialogic and the resource dependence theory framework, the main aim of this research is to analyze how organizational structure, resource allocation and communication policies of NGOs focused on water management influence the online commitment of their stakeholders. Exploratory results show that these NGOs are not taking enough advantage of social media to engage with their potential donors and volunteers because of the remarkable difference between the management of Facebook posts and users’ behavior. Using multivariate lineal regression, our findings show that certain structural (namely, size, reputation and board size), economic (fundraising expenses) and social media (number of Facebook fans) characteristics positively influence stakeholder engagement, while administrative spending and a broad presence in many social networks straitens the ability of these type of NGOs to attract and retain stakeholders’ commitment through social media.


First Monday ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodrigo Sandoval-Almazan ◽  
Andrea L. Kavanaugh

The use of social media by public administration has been growing steadily, and fostering important transformations in organization, costs, citizen interaction and efficiency. Citizens are increasingly more informed about government activities, performance, and claims solutions. Citiizens and non-profit organizations are in greater communication with each other about government planning and response to complex and collective problems. Social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, You Tube and WhatsApp, as well as related tools, such as commenting, liking, tagging and rating, change the distribution of information, power and resources. The growing maturity of public officials in the use of these tools not only creates new opportunities, but also engenders problems. Many politicians, public officials and public servants are seeking ways to adapt their daily operations and practices to make effective use of social media for interaction with non-governmental organizations and with citizens and to provide information and services more efficiently. The papers in this special issue on social media and government capture the current state of some of these opportunities and problems.


2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-49
Author(s):  
Kehinde Kadijat Kadiri ◽  
Adetola Kehinde ◽  
Adeyinka Tella ◽  
Raji Khalid

There is a growing interest in the ways non-governmental organisations (NGOs) can ensure that electorates have access to information that could improve comprehension of the electoral process and reinforce tranquil relations between the electorates and political stakeholders. This study examined the usage of social media for 2019 electoral peace campaign by NGOs in Kwara State, Nigeria. The study adopted a qualitative research method and multistage sampling technique was adopted as sampling technique. The study focused mainly on four LGAs i.e. Asa, Ilorin South, Ilorin West and Ilorin East Local Government Areas. In these four LGAs, 15 NGOs with vested interest in electoral peace campaigns were purposively selected. Unstructured interview was used to collect data from the social media handlers of theses NGOs. The data collected were recorded and transcribed. The gathered data were arranged in themes following the approach of manual thematic analysis. Findings from this study showed that NGOs in Kwara State used social media for electoral peace campaign during 2019 general elections. Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn were the most used social media platforms among NGOs in Kwara State during 2019 general elections; however, there level of usage is average. The motivation for social media usage among NGOs in Kwara State during 2019 general elections can be attributed to the wider coverage and reach of social media. Lastly, during 2019 general elections, NGOs in Kwara State embarked on peace campaigns before elections, some do it during and few do it post electoral peace campaign. Among several recommendations, the study recommended that the electoral umpire in Nigeria, Independent National Electoral Commission should include training of officers in their electoral briefings on the viability of social media use during elections by officers.


2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (7) ◽  
pp. 2335-2338
Author(s):  
Agim Poshka

It is believed that language policies aim to organize, encourage but sometimes even discourage language rights. Although slowly states in the Balkans started to believe that language rights could be used as a tool for creation of social cohesion, there is one aspect of language practice that is ignored but seems to cause quite negative impact, and that is hate speech. This paper investigated modes in which this dangerous tool is harming inter-ethnic and inter-cultural stability in the region. It is a long term interest to the judicial system of every country to limit the negative impact that hate speech has to certain fragile societies. The study also reflects on particular laws that aim to expand the span of freedom of speech and minimize the presence of hate speech in public life. This derogatory behavior can ultimately produce hatred and in some cases even human sacrifices. A definition that is often available in literature regarding hate speech is that “hate speech is an abusive or threatening speech or writing that expresses prejudice against a particular group, especially on the basis of race, religion, or sexual orientation”. In other words the basic concept of using language for solely communicational purpose has switched to use language to insult, intimidate, or threaten a group or an individual and is primarily based on a particular characteristic or disability. In its violent history, Europe has witnessed a considerable number of cases of human rights violations, and recent ones often get the “prefix” of hate speech. Certain domains of public speaking undoubtedly require legal measures and few societies have already designed their legal framework in order to address the issue The conditions have become even more dramatic with the introduction of social media. There are thousands of pages and blogs in which hate speech is expressed publicly. In an article published by the legaldictionary.net it states that with the advent of social media, the issue of offensive and threatening speech has become a global problem”. There are many cases in which hate speech is used as an argument of free speech. The process becomes even more challenging when the officials are expected to draw a line between where free speech ends and hate speech begins. Certain domains of public speaking undoubtedly require legal measures and as a result few societies have designed legal framework in order to address the issue and this study provides different methods and approaches are considered in the process. The study also cites a number of international cases which aim to create a greater picture of these deleterious phenomena and although there are many elements of the ethical and moral dilemma in regards to the freedom of expression it is important that we are aware of the responsibility and the impact we have when using hate speech in any public appearances.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Saraite-Sariene ◽  
Federico Galán-Valdivieso ◽  
Juana Alonso-Cañadas ◽  
Manuela García-Tabuyo

PurposeThe role of female managers has been of increasing interest among scholars in recent years, especially regarding sustainability issues. The same could be said about the usefulness of social media in non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in demonstrating accountability to their stakeholders and attracting and keeping donors and volunteers. This paper aims to meet both research interests by analyzing to what extent women in top positions can foster stakeholders' engagement via social media.Design/methodology/approachOnline engagement can be proxied using data from social media to develop a measure that summarizes the main actions social media users are able to use in order to show their reactions to social media publications. Facebook data were obtained using proprietary software (Facebook data model) developed by the research team to carry out data massive extraction, processing and exploration.FindingsThe results of the multivariate analysis show that female leadership in both top and environmental-specific positions enhance social media engagement, while a higher percentage of women on the board of directors exert the opposite effect.Research limitations/implicationsThis study is not without limitations. First, this research is focused on a specific type of non-governmental organization (environmental NGO). Second, this study does not include economic variables such as donation income or expense structure. Third, data come only from Facebook as the leading social network.Originality/valueThis paper advances in the scarce knowledge about the role of women and the levels of online engagement (interactive conversations) in NGOs focused on sustainability.


2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Thomas Just

Since reunification in 1990, the German government has taken numerous steps to counter antisemitism and improve its relations with the Jewish community more broadly. Its approach has consisted primarily of two parts: antiradicalization legal measures and public diplomacy. In terms of legal measures, Germany has banned hate speech and incitement, adjusted immigration policy for Jews, and granted Judaism full legal status. In terms of public diplomacy, Germany has created a network of both governmental and non-governmental organizations to counter antisemitic attitudes within domestic society and to demonstrate progress abroad. This article examines these facets of the German approach, evaluates its success through an analysis of extremist group membership and survey data measuring antisemitic attitudes, and discusses some evolving challenges to which the approach must adapt.


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