King’s research will be used in an international project to de-code anti-Semitism using AI to combat the spread of online hatred.

Dr. Daniel Allington, Senior Lecturer in Social and Cultural Artificial Intelligence, will work on ‘Decoding Antisemitism’, a three-year project, backed by the Alfred Landecker Foundation and involving various international organisations and the Center for Research on Antisemitism”.

In order to recognize and combat implicit hatred more quickly, the international team, comprised of discourse analysts, computational linguists and historians, will develop an AI-driven approach to identifying online antisemitism.

The combination of these research disciplines is unique to date in its setup as well as in the subject matter of the analysis itself. Computers will help run through vast amounts of data and images that humans wouldn’t be able to assess because of their sheer quantity. Studies have also shown that the majority of antisemitic defamation is expressed in implicit ways – for example through the use of codes (“juice” instead of “Jews”) and allusions to certain conspiracy narratives or the reproduction of stereotypes, especially through images. As implicit antisemitism is much harder to detect, the combination of qualitative and AI-driven approaches will allow for a more comprehensive search.

Dr. Allington said: “Internet companies are failing to stem the tide of online hate. The task is difficult because hatred is often expressed in subtle ways and constantly changes form. But machine learning can serve as a force multiplier, extending the ability of human moderators to identify content that may need to be removed.

"We are looking forward to collaborating with all those involved with this project and we are grateful to the Alfred Landecker Foundation for their support – it is only through partnerships such as this, and the support they are providing, that we can hope to make progress towards protecting minorities in these hard to reach spaces."

The Foundation has joined forces with the “Center for Research on Antisemitism” at the Technical University of Berlin, King’s College London and other renowned scientific institutions in Europe and Israel.

The focus of the project is initially on Germany, France and the United Kingdom, but will later be expanded to cover other countries and languages.