Identifying hate speech across languages and cultures
Facebook is being subpoenaed for records related to the platform’s handling of coronavirus misinformation, and the platform is also being criticized for not identifying certain hateful content across the cultural contexts and languages. The government of Esawatini, Africa's last absolute monarchy, cut off social media access to its citizens last month following pro-democracy protests. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists have also taken a look at thousands of COVID-19 misinformation narratives and have produced a regional roundup based on their research.
Meedan's partner Birmingham City University is hiring an evaluation consultant to work on evaluation and reporting for our Check Global project. Check out the link below for more details!
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Africa’s last kingdom is using modern methods to silence dissent (Quartz)
The government of Eswatini issued a directive to internet service providers to suspend access to social media and online platforms until further notice on 29 June. This follows pro-democracy protests calling for the abolition of the monarchy and introduction of a democratic government. Eswatini is Africa's last absolute monarchy, and the protests, which started in May, have intensified over the past few weeks, leading to a state-imposed curfew, and the closure of schools and universities. The shutdown was confirmed by MTN Group, which operates in the country as MTN Eswatini. The Eswatini Communications Commission ordered MTN, along with other telecommunications operators in the country, to cut off access to social media and online platforms, and in response, lawyers in the country filed an urgent court interdict to force the government to reinstate internet access in the country.
"Shutting down the internet is a bad decision. Time and time again, these bad decisions get made. Authorities in Eswatini claim they want peace, but are in fact flaming tensions. Shutting down the internet is absurd." - Felicia Anthonio, #KeepItOn Campaign Coordinator, Access Now
Facebook’s failure to pay heed to non-English languages furthering hate speech: Australian researchers (Outlook India)
Facebook's failure in hate speech regulation on its platform in Asia is not because of its definition of hate, but of its inability to identify certain types of hate in different cultural contexts and languages, finds a study by Australian social scientists Fiona R Martin and Aim Sinpeng. The study conducted over a period of 18 months analysed Facebook’s response to hate speech on LGBTQI+ community pages in India, Myanmar, Indonesia, the Philippines and Australia.
"During our study we were pleased to see that Facebook did broaden its definition of hate speech, which now captures a wider range of hateful behaviour. It also explicitly recognises that what happens online can trigger offline violence...... We concluded that Facebook’s problem is not in defining hate, but being unable to identify certain types of hate, such as that posted in minority languages and regional dialects. It also often fails to respond appropriately to user reports of hate content, said Martin and Sinpeng."
We’ve analyzed thousands of COVID-19 misinformation narratives. Here are six regional takeaways (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists )
Five days after the World Health Organization classified COVID-19 as a pandemic, the Empirical Studies of Conflict Project at Princeton University began cataloging misinformation efforts surrounding the spread of the coronavirus in collaboration with Microsoft Research. The goal was to support industry efforts to limit the spread of false narratives about the pandemic. The researchers soon realized that categorizing the stories in a systematic way and making the data public could contribute to a much broader understanding of trends in COVID-19 misinformation.
"It is often suggested that all politics is local; so is misinformation. Contrary to what one might expect from the globalized information environment, the salient themes in pandemic-related false narratives varied significantly across regions and countries; localized false narratives prevailed over global ones. When generating misinformation, social media users seemed to absorb a common set of COVID-19 background conditions and use them to falsify specific narratives to reflect local and regional realities."
D.C. AG subpoenas Facebook in escalating probe of COVID-19 misinformation (Politico)
D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine has subpoenaed Facebook for records related to the platform’s handling of coronavirus misinformation as part of a previously undisclosed investigation into whether the tech giant is violating consumer protection laws. Racine, a Democrat, is calling on Facebook to release by the end of next week an internal study it conducted looking into vaccine hesitancy among its users, as first revealed by news reports in March.
"In response to the subpoena, Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement that the company has "removed more than 18 million pieces of content on Facebook and Instagram that violate our COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation policies, and labeled more than 167 million pieces of COVID-19 content rated false by our network of fact checking partners."
What’s new at Meedan
[External Job Posting] Evaluation Consultant
Birmingham City University, Meedan’s Check Global project partner, is seeking an Evaluation Consultant to play a key role in the project’s evaluation and reporting for 2021. Check Global is a program run by Meedan in partnership with Birmingham City University, with funding from Swedish International Development Agency (Sida). The project aims to improve digital literacy, community-building and political engagement skills for citizen journalists, activists, journalism students, civil society organisations and human rights defenders, thus strengthening their role as investigators and contributors to the public sphere.