The Decoding Antisemitism Project—Reflections, Methods, and Goals
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Matthias J. Becker
Abstract
This article introduces the pilot project “Decoding Antisemitism: An AI-driven Study on Hate Speech and Imagery Online.” The aim of the project is to analyse the frequency, content and linguistic structure of online antisemitism, with the eventual aim of developing AI machine learning that is capable of recognizing explicit and implicit forms of antisemitic hate speech. The initial focus is on comments found on the websites and social media platforms of major media outlets in the United Kingdom, Germany, and France. The article outlines the project’s multi-step methodological design, which seeks to capture the complexity, diversity and continual development of antisemitism online. The first step is qualitative content analysis. Rather than relying on surveys, here a pre-existing “real-world” data set-namely, threads of online comments responding to media stories judged to be potential triggers for antisemitic speech-is collected and analysed for antisemitic content and linguistic structure by expert coders. The second step is supervised machine learning. Here, models are trained to mimic the decisions of human coders and learn how antisemitic stereotypes are currently reproduced in different web milieus-including implicit forms. The third step is large-scale quantitative analyses in which frequencies and combinations of words and phrases are measured, allowing the exploration of trends from millions of pieces of data.
© 2022 by Academic Studies Press
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelei
- Contents
- Editorial
- Theme Editorial
- THEME ARTICLES: ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY YEARS OF RUSSIAN ANTIZIONISM: SOME CONTEXT FOR TODAY’S PROPAGANDA OPERATION AGAINST UKRAINE
- Demonization Blueprints: Soviet Conspiracist Antizionism in Contemporary Left-Wing Discourse
- Durban Antizionism: Its Sources, Its Impact, and Its Relation to Older Anti-Jewish Ideologies
- GENERAL ARTICLES
- The Generalised Antisemitism (GeAs) Scale: A Questionnaire Instrument for Measuring Antisemitism as Expressed in Relation Both to Jews and to Israel
- How Users of British Media Websites Make a Bogeyman of George Soros
- Surging, Stable, or Subdued: The Jewish Perception of Antisemitism in Canada’s Southernmost Region
- Does Academic Freedom Protect Antisemitism?—Part II: Social Media, Antizionism, and the End of Academic Freedom
- Gab as Disseminator of Antisemitic Conspiracy Myths and Enabler of Offline Violence
- The Mainstreaming of American Antisemitism: The Defeat of an Ideal
- RESEARCH NOTE
- The Decoding Antisemitism Project—Reflections, Methods, and Goals
- IN MEMORIAM: PETE NEWBON, 1983–2022
- In Memory of Pete Newbon
- BOOK REVIEWS
- Key Concepts in the Study of Antisemitism. Edited by Sol Goldberg, Scott Ury, and Kalman Weiser. London: Palgrave, 2021. 354 pages. $29.99.
- Why Do People Discriminate against Jews?
- The Holocaust and North Africa
- Looking for an Enemy: 8 Essays on Antisemitism
- Israel Denial: Anti-Zionism, Anti-Semitism, and the Faculty Campaign against the Jewish State
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelei
- Contents
- Editorial
- Theme Editorial
- THEME ARTICLES: ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY YEARS OF RUSSIAN ANTIZIONISM: SOME CONTEXT FOR TODAY’S PROPAGANDA OPERATION AGAINST UKRAINE
- Demonization Blueprints: Soviet Conspiracist Antizionism in Contemporary Left-Wing Discourse
- Durban Antizionism: Its Sources, Its Impact, and Its Relation to Older Anti-Jewish Ideologies
- GENERAL ARTICLES
- The Generalised Antisemitism (GeAs) Scale: A Questionnaire Instrument for Measuring Antisemitism as Expressed in Relation Both to Jews and to Israel
- How Users of British Media Websites Make a Bogeyman of George Soros
- Surging, Stable, or Subdued: The Jewish Perception of Antisemitism in Canada’s Southernmost Region
- Does Academic Freedom Protect Antisemitism?—Part II: Social Media, Antizionism, and the End of Academic Freedom
- Gab as Disseminator of Antisemitic Conspiracy Myths and Enabler of Offline Violence
- The Mainstreaming of American Antisemitism: The Defeat of an Ideal
- RESEARCH NOTE
- The Decoding Antisemitism Project—Reflections, Methods, and Goals
- IN MEMORIAM: PETE NEWBON, 1983–2022
- In Memory of Pete Newbon
- BOOK REVIEWS
- Key Concepts in the Study of Antisemitism. Edited by Sol Goldberg, Scott Ury, and Kalman Weiser. London: Palgrave, 2021. 354 pages. $29.99.
- Why Do People Discriminate against Jews?
- The Holocaust and North Africa
- Looking for an Enemy: 8 Essays on Antisemitism
- Israel Denial: Anti-Zionism, Anti-Semitism, and the Faculty Campaign against the Jewish State
