Institute of Criminology Public Seminars: 'Social Data Science & Criminology: Machine Classification and Modelling of Cyberhate in Online Social Networks'

Speakers: Professor Matthew Williams (Professor of Criminology) and Dr Pete Burnap (Senior Lecturer in Data Science), Directors, Social Data Science Lab, Cardiff University

In this seminar Prof Williams and Dr Burnap demonstrate how criminological research can benefit from methodological, data and technical developments pioneered in the emerging field of social data science. They present results from their ESRC and Google funded study on the classification and modelling of cyberhate on social media following the Woolwich terrorist attack. This work has been published in the British Journal of Criminology (http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/content/56/2/211) and EPJ Data Science (http://epjds.epj.org/articles/epjdata/abs/2016/01/13688_2016_Article_72/...).

Professor Williams and Dr Burnap are Directors of the ESRC Social Data Science Lab at Cardiff University, which continue the work of the Cardiff Online Social Media Observatory (COSMOS) programme (2011-2015). They sit on the ESRC’s Big Data Network Phase 3 Working Group and have conducted research on social media and crime for the Home Office, Metropolitan Police Service and Community Security Trust. They recently completed an ESRC and Google funded project on using social media to estimate the propagation and spread cyberhate and a National Centre for Research Methods project on estimating offline crime patterns using Open Source Communications. In 2016, with RAND Corporation and Rand Europe (Dr Alex Sutherland) they were awarded a 3 year research grant from the US Department of Justice (NIJ) to study the relationship between online and offline hate in Los Angeles. In 2015 they were jointly voted by JISC as two of the top 50 most influential social media users in Higher Education.

This seminar starts at 5.30pm. A drinks reception in the basement foyer will follow this seminar for attendees

The IoC Public Seminar Series is open to all interested in attending, with no ticket required. If you wish to be added to the seminar mailing list, please contact: Joanne Garner, on: jf225@cam.ac.uk