Cardiff researchers get £250k to monitor Brexit hate crime on Twitter

Cardiff University's Social Data Science Lab has been awarded a £250,000 grant to set up a centre to monitor “Brexit-related hate crime” on Twitter. The lab – based in Wales, UK, and dubbed the Centre for Cyberhate Research and Policy – will develop “a monitoring tool that displays a live feed of the propagation of hate speech …

[Anonymous Coward]

We will be enhancing our existing language models using cutting edge computational methods to mine massive amounts of public reaction and provide meaningful insights into hateful and antagonistic commentary within minutes of an event occurring.

Replace a few variables and you have the relevant info for the Ministry of Truth to direct the population into appropriate thinking. How funny - there were days when the Internet was considered our greatest future weapon against repressionary regimes which quote their agenda out of the Mein Kampf.

[Captain DaFt]

"We will be enhancing our existing language models using cutting edge computational methods"

So, how many mega-flops did it take to come up with language like "pre-crime" and "cyberhate"?

Nice scary sounding sounding (but meaningless) words there. Guaranteed to get the legislation, powers, and funding you seek, I'll bet.

[Tom Paine]

Written a lot of sociological and anthropological research papers, have you?

[SkippyBing]

Who defines what Brexit Related Hate Crime is?

I mean a hate crime is fairly broadly defined, it's one where the victim thinks one of their protected characteristics was motivation for the crime. Even bike theft has been recorded as a hate crime.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/the-real-hate-crime-scandal/

So who defines what is hate speech in a Brexit context? Would it include the invective about stupid Leave voters from the Remain side? What about hate crimes that are committed on Twitter by people who strongly support one side or the other but aren't actually related to Brexit?

Is there any motivation for the researchers to up the incidence of hate crimes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Who defines what Brexit Related Hate Crime is?

"Is there any motivation for the researchers to up the incidence of hate crimes?"

Further grant money.

[codejunky]

Re: Who defines what Brexit Related Hate Crime is?

I would expect a lot of brexit tweeting will either come under hate speech (both sides) or hard line remainers posting how depressed they are.

[AMBxx]

J'Accuse

I think the fact you have to ask the question shows that your guilty.

Might take me a little while to work out what you're guilty of, but your guilt is not in doubt.

[Jason Bloomberg]

Re: Who defines what Brexit Related Hate Crime is?

Even bike theft has been recorded as a hate crime.

Whether hate or not depends on context, what the motivation was.

Stealing a bike without regard to who the victim may be is rather different to stealing a bike because the victim had a certain skin colour or followed a particular religion and was done primarily, not to advantage the thief, but to disadvantage the victim.

If a crime is motivated by hate it should be recorded as such.

[SkippyBing]

Re: Who defines what Brexit Related Hate Crime is?

'If a crime is motivated by hate it should be recorded as such.'

Agreed, but currently all it takes is the victim to say it was a hate crime for it to be recorded as such. The actual motivation of the perpetrator, who they may never have met and the Police may never catch, is not considered relevant.

[Tom Paine]

Re: Who defines what Brexit Related Hate Crime is?

currently all it takes is the victim to say it was a hate crime for it to be recorded as such

Source? No, the sewer press doesn't count.

[54Will]

Re: Who defines what Brexit Related Hate Crime is?

Hate crime is b.s. Crime is crime. The motivation is that the criminal is a criminal. 'Hate speech' is another load of b.s. Is it ok if one happens to hate the effect of a lousy, third-world culture encroaching on and degrading the quality of the lives of the 'encroached on' while loving the people who are dragging the culture backward? Sheesh! What happened to the basic right of an individual to speak plainly about issues that effect their lives? Trying to force people to shut their mouths about bad policy that is destroying the nation and ensuring a dystopian future seems to be a totalitarian's dream come true. Hate speech laws have no place in democracy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Who defines what Brexit Related Hate Crime is?

Stealing a bike is a crime. Hating the bike owner is not.

If the police now have nothing better to do than patrol people's thoughts and speech, then we have a serious problem.

Wake up, before it is too late.

[GingerOne]

Re: Who defines what Brexit Related Hate Crime is?

"Who defines what Brexit Related Hate Crime is? "

Did you even read the article? "Cyberhate, a term coined by Cardiff's Dr Peter Burnap, co-director at the Social Data Science Lab at Cardiff University, refers to a form of antagonism without reference to the legality of the speech"

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Who defines what Brexit Related Hate Crime is?

I believe this is not the case

"Whether hate or not depends on context, what the motivation was."

It only matters what other people perceive the motivation to be. Not the actual motivation of the person committing the crime. Much like sexual harassment. It also doesn't need to be either involved parties perception but a third party unrelated to the incident.

As I recall a person who "incorrectly" genders a transgender person by accident is guilty of a crime if the "victim" simply feels that they have been harassed/upset/attacked for it to be a hate act.

Also as simply stating that native Britons should be the focus of the British government and civil society is a "hateful" we have to question the use of the language.

Much as fascist now means supporter of free speech and Nazi means conservative, and anti-fascist means fascist.

[AMBxx]

Re: Who defines what Brexit Related Hate Crime is?

It's much simpler than that - white, heterosexual men are always guilty.

[Tom Paine]

Re: Who defines what Brexit Related Hate Crime is?

Correct.

And I speak as a white heterosexual man. Mostly.

[Aitor 1]

Re: Who defines what Brexit Related Hate Crime is?

Well, if you think that native Britons and not all citizens shoudl be the focus, you are a tad xenophobic... just saying...

[nijam]

Re: Who defines what Brexit Related Hate Crime is?

> ... if the "victim" simply feels that they have been harassed/upset/attacked for it to be a hate act

So a better description would "hallucination crime", in that it is a crime only by virtue of what happens in the mind of a person claiming to be a victim?

[tr1ck5t3r]

Re: Who defines what Brexit Related Hate Crime is?

>Who defines what Brexit Related Hate Crime is?

Those that make the rules. Representative Democracy is a woolly word for sheeple to describe Fascism because they both make the rules up as they go alone, and another ever changes.

"He added that the ultimate aim of the research is to help the government identify areas that require policy attention and improve “interventions to stop hate crime from spreading"."

Instead of using "spreading", replace it with the word "viral".

Brexit & Trumps election shows people are so easily manipulated by the Fake News that steered the election results. All perfectly legit in Love and War.

[Tom Paine]

Re: Who defines what Brexit Related Hate Crime is?

Who defines what Brexit Related Hate Crime is?

IF ONLY someone had thought to answer that question in the article you didn't read just now!

[davidp231]

How long before we get grants to research thoughtcrime?

[smartypants]

Thought crime now a thing

Anyone not found wrapping themselves in red white and blue brexit is a traitor.

Number 10 has even hired the bloke who made up some of the stories that got us into this mess to keep us on the straight and narrow.

May knows which websites you visit. If you have nothing to fear you have nothing to hide.

How I laugh when I think back to Blighty of 2012.

[codejunky]

Re: Thought crime now a thing

@ smartypants

Pre-May and all the way back through Tony's Labour-

Anyone not totally accepting of the EU and its utopian wet dream along with its faultless currency and march toward federalism was a eurosceptic. Of course the word stopped being used when the Euro started destroying EU countries.

Number 10 has promised the people a say on the EU membership for so long it is hard to remember a time before that. Follow of course with pro-EU propaganda and a rigged vote in the hope of forcing the right answer.

NSA spies on us, GHCQ on the US and then swap. And anti-terrorism laws to track and more against every day civilians not even suspected of terrorism.

Ah 2012. Where Blighty was working to exit a recession while remaining tied to the EU actively sacrificing countries for political amusement.

Not a great deal has changed really.

[Your alien overlord - fear me]

For something this important, I'm suprised they didn't get an EU grant :-)

[AMBxx]

Baseline?

Ignoring for one moment whether this research is necessary, why are they only starting analysing data from 23rd June? Needs a baseline of 'some time period' before that to make any useful conclusions.

[Anonymous Coward]

No doubt they will blame the hate crimes on brexiters being racist, not on remainers having spent years telling actual racists that all brexiters are on their side, so that the racists suddenly believe they have millions of allies?

[Haku]

Tracking people who post shit on the internet?

They should find me easily, I've been posting shit on the internet for over 20 years now.

[Captain Badmouth]

Re: Tracking people who post shit on the internet?

Excellent.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't believe in hate crime

If you beat someone up, steal from them, hold them in slavery, forcefully remove their head covering, harass them in the street or whatever, those things are bad anyway. It doesn't matter what colour their skin is or which god they do or don't believe in.

[GingerOne]

Re: I don't believe in hate crime

"I don't believe in hate crime

If you beat someone up, steal from them, hold them in slavery, forcefully remove their head covering, harass them in the street or whatever, those things are bad anyway. It doesn't matter what colour their skin is or which god they do or don't believe in."

That is true but if the "colour their skin is or which god they do or don't believe in" is the reason behind the crime then it has to be considered. If we don't understand why people commit crime then we can never hope to prevent it in the future.

[Doogie Howser MD]

Hate Crime, according to Gene Hunt

The phrase always reminds me of a quote from the Great Man :-

Sam: I think we need to explore whether this attempted murder was a hate crime.

Gene: What, as opposed to one of those I-really-really-like-you sort of murders?

[Dieter Haussmann]

This is terrible. This is excellent. The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well this seems like a wonderful way to spend money, on the plus side Twitter wont be around in a year or so... fucks given? Exactly Zero.

[Commswonk]

Why limit it to Twitter?

Some of the stuff uttered by "Remainers" about "Leavers" in a public forum (e.g. politicians on television) is pretty unpleasant - patronising at the very least. A more common accusation is that (by definition) all "Leavers" are racist, and I would have thought that saying that would qualify as a hate crime.

As "hate", like beauty, seems to be in the eye of the beholder it might be fun to report them for it. It wouldn't stop them in the "House" of course because (sadly) they would do it under the cloak of parliamentary priviledge.

In the interests of balance I would expect "Leavers" to be equally accountable for what they say and how they say it, but I'm not conscious of their being quite so unpleasant about the Remainers, at least not in public.

[davenewman]

Re: Why limit it to Twitter?

I have only seen some early research, but there is a pattern to the way Trump and Alt-Right figures post on Twitter - they send out many more tweets (6000 in one case), but hardly ever reply to anyone. There is an article about it in this month's Wired.

[astrax]

Oh I get it!

"The centre, which has been dubbed the Centre for Cyberhate Research and Policy".

So you're saying it's CRaP?

[Dwarf]

Free speech

I thought we lived in a free country where we have free speech.

[Commswonk]

Re: Free speech

I thought we lived in a free country where we have free speech.

You do realise that you have just committed a thoughtcrime, don't you?

I denounce you as being doubleplusungood.

[Haku]

Re: Free speech

It really makes me laugh when people cry that their "free speech" is being curtailed on privately owned websites.

[0x41]

money well spent. lol.

[The Nazz]

Oh boy, someone is in really big trouble ...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38904863

LOL.

[Wiltshire]

In related news, the Centre for Cyberhate Research and Policy is considering a rebrand as its role is expanded (thanks to more grant money).

The new name will be : Centre for Cyberhate Chat Policing (CCCP)

Any connection with any previous organisation with the same acronym and similar activities is entirely coincidental.