Brexit hate crime

Social Data Science Lab awarded £250,000 grant to set up centre to monitor Brexit-related hate crime on social media. Researchers from Cardiff University have been awarded a quarter of a million pounds to help the UK Government monitor Brexit-related hate crime on social media. A new Centre for Cyberhate Research and Policy, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council , will focus on the development of a monitoring tool that displays a live feed of the propagation of hate speech as it happens on Twitter. It is hoped the UK Government will be able to use the tool to identify areas that require policy attention and to improve interventions to stop hate crime from spreading. Professor Matthew Williams, the principal investigator on the project and Co-Director of the Social Data Science Lab at Cardiff University, said: "Hate crimes have been shown to cluster in time and tend to increase, sometimes significantly, in the aftermath of "trigger" events. The referendum on the UK's future in the European Union has galvanized certain prejudiced opinions held by a minority of people, resulting in a spate of hate crimes. Many of these crimes are taking place on social media.