AI-Assisted Counterspeech against Online Hate
Project "Counter Speech" Presented at Symposium on Disinformation and Hybrid Threat
Within the framework of the symposium on "Desinformation im Kontext hybrider Bedrohungen" (disinformation in the context of hybrid threats) jointly organised by the AIT (Austrian Institute of Technology), APA (Austria Presse Agentur), and the Federal Ministry of Defence, the researchers Djordje Slijepčević and Matthias Zeppelzauer from the Institute of Creative\Media/Technologies at the St. Pölten UAS presented their current research project Counter Speech in a keynote titled "Young People Against Online Hate: Leveraging Counter Speech with AI".
The symposium brought together experts from various fields to discuss the challenges of and possible solutions to dealing with disinformation and hybrid threats.
"We would like to thank the organisers of the event for bringing together important partners from research, media, and national defence in order to engage in exchange on the threat of disinformation. The purpose of our project is to contribute methods for fighting toxic content on social media in line with our democratic and humanistic values", says Zeppelzauer.
Together against Online Hate
"Counter Speech" deals with the fight against hate posts and cyber bullying in social media. As young people between the ages of 12 and 19 are particularly affected by such attacks, the project relies on "citizen-generated counterspeech" that actively encourages Internet users to meet hate comments with civic courage. Instead of just deleting comments or blocking users, the project aims at increasing the visibility of counterspeech and making its effectiveness measurable.
The interdisciplinary project team behind Counter Speech combines methods from informatics, data analysis, and social sciences to analyse patterns of successful counterspeech and generate suggestions for specific contexts. Both text and visual elements such as images and memes are used in this context. The objective is to better support and motivate young people to defend themselves against hate on the Internet.
FH-Prof. Priv.-Doz. Dipl.-Ing. Mag. Dr. Matthias Zeppelzauer
Head ofMedia Computing Research Group
Institute of Creative\Media/Technologies Department of Media and Digital Technologies