The 2025 edition of the BRISPO lecture series: Prof. Carlos Arcila-Calderón, Universidad de Salamanca | From Hate Speech to Hate Crime: Detecting Harmful Messages at Scale (ONLINE)
Prof. Dr. Arcila Calderón is full Professor in the Department of Sociology and Communication at the University of Salamanca, Spain. His expertise focuses on the critical relationship between online hate speech and offline hate crimes, presenting innovative computational approaches to predict real-world violence through social media analysis.
Prof. Dr. Arcila Calderón will discuss findings from his research analyzing hate speech indicators (hatred, toxicity, and sentiment) across X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook, correlated with Spanish police hate crime records from 2016-2018. He will share insights from his work with geolocated tweets and their relationship to public attitudes toward migrants in Europe. His prior research has demonstrated significant correlations between regions with higher support for migrants and lower levels of hate speech on Twitter, suggesting that social media analysis can complement traditional survey methods for understanding public opinion.
The lecture will discuss practical applications for the early detection and prevention of hate crimes, demonstrating how computational analysis of inflammatory online language can serve as a leading indicator for potential hate crimes, offering valuable insights for law enforcement, policymakers, and social media platforms seeking to mitigate harm at scale.
