IEEE Computer Society and GBC/ACM

7:00 PM, Thursday, 18 August 2016

MIT Room E51-325

The Technical Challenge of Hate Speech, Incitement and Extremism in Social Media

Andre Oboler

This talk is being sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Visitor program.

The primary challenge is working out how to identify incitement and hate speech given: (a) the volume of content creation in social media (b) the use of videos, images, coded language, local references etc (c) the changing nature of the expression over time (d) limitations that prevent governments demanding access to non-public data.

The approach my organisation uses relies on crowd sourcing, artificial intelligence and cloud computing. It enables content to be evaluated by people, but then quality controls the response of the crowd through AI.

Dr Andre Oboler is CEO of the Online Hate Prevention Institute, an Australian charity combating racism, bigotry and extremism in social media. He also serves as an expert on the Australian Government's Delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, co-chair of the Working Group on Antisemitism on the Internet and in the Media for the Global Forum to Combat Antisemitism, and as a Vice Chair of the IEEE Computer Society's Member and Geographic Activities Board. Dr Oboler holds a PhD in Computer Science from Lancaster University (UK), a Juris Doctor from Monash University (Australia) and completed a Post Doctoral Fellowship in Political Science at Bar-Ilan University (Israel). His research interests include empirical software engineering, process improvement, hate speech in social media and the social implications of technology. Web: Online Hate Prevention Institute www.ohpi.org.au; personal website www.oboler.com.

This joint meeting of the Boston Chapter of the IEEE Computer Society and GBC/ACM will be held in MIT Room E51-325.  E51 is the Tang Center on the corner of Wadsworth and Amherst Sts and Memorial Dr.; it's mostly used by the Sloan School. You can see it on this map of the MIT campus. Room 325 is on the 3rd floor.

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Updated: July 26, 2016.