EXPERT: Dr. Daniel Allington: Computational social scientist at King’s College London, focussing on extremism, hate and disinformation in the contemporary world.
Daniel Allington dissects the concept of hate speech, arguing that it must not be defined as thoughts or language that some groups might find offensive, but as active incitements to action against another group which must be policed. He analyses the response to hate speech on social media platforms, which has tended to rely on algorithms that detect blacklisted words. These blacklists can automatically target innocent speech, whilst those individuals who use social media to deliberately provoke hate nimbly avoid countermeasures. He also outlines the prevailing problem of conspiracy theories, which simplify complex political relationships into the acts of a malicious cabal – and the historical and contemporary role of conspiracy theories in anti-Semitic beliefs.