How do we combat modern hatred?

Intolerance is one of the toughest challenges British society needs to grapple with for a sustainable democratic future. But we know so little about the roots and status of hate movements on the macrolevel, because data-driven policy-oriented research is so rare.

That’s what we are here for.

We are a collaboration of scholars from the Department of Politics and Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford, using advanced quantitative methods, artificial intelligence, and original data to document and analyse hate speech and hate crimes in the UK.

What to look out for

OIDL Roadmap

15/03/24

Lab launch

Look out for our announcement on the character, composition, and plans of this new initiative.

15/04/24

First Report Release

We are working on a special report on hate speech and hate crime in the UK over the past year.

15/05/24

Full Data Release

We will reveal the full extent for our data openly and transparently, so everyone can use it.

OUR FOCUS

Research Areas

We collect data on hate crimes and hateful speech that target protected characteristics, including race, religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity.

Racism

Antisemitism

Islamophobia

Transphobia

Homophobia

Our Approach

It is often claimed that intolerance, extremism, and hate is on the rise in the UK. But most groups who study hate groups provide focused insight based on qualitative research. We believe that this is immensely valuable, but that the public conversation is missing access to high-quality data on hate crimes and hate speech. We aim to use state-of-the-art AI technology to gather such granular data, and then analyse it with advanced econometric methods. By doing so, we can uncover large-scale trends as well as the consistent roots of hate. Thus, we aim to inform and back-up the public discourse with original data that is currently missing, and use it to develop the best ways to combat hatred.