Press release: Aalborg tackles digital hate with TrygFonden and Nordic Safe Cities

Categories: News
Udgivet: 19 Jan - 2022

Aalborg tackles digital hate with TrygFonden and Nordic Safe Cities

 

In recent years, the Danes’ digital and physical life and everyday have merged more, and with this, many of our democratic conversations also move online and onto social media. In here, the tone and debate are often harsh, and in recent years, we have witnessed hatred, racism and extreme statements flourishing and normalizing on our social media. Therefore, Aalborg Municipality will be the first Danish municipality to map the hatred online, and investigate how the municipality, police and civil society can stand together to create safety online for all citizens in Aalborg.

 

Aalborg Municipality, together with Nordic Safe Cities, has received a grant from TrygFonden to initiate the Tryg Digital By (Safe Digital City) concept. Through the use of a hate algorithm, they will map the hate online, and based on that analysis, initiate new concepts for digital prevention, an area where very few professionals have yet had the competence or sufficient knowledge to be able to take the lead.

This is an important area where we must act together, says Councillor for Jobs and Welfare in Aalborg Municipality, Nuuradiin S. Hussein:

“The citizens of Aalborg municipality generally experience that Aalborg is a safe place to live. Also online. But it is important that it continues like this and that we get a better understanding of what is going on online so we can intervene. Just as we have always done in our physical streets, so we must work with our partners to make everyone feel safe in our digital streets and to reach those who may be tempted by the extreme communities.”

 According to Councillor Nuuradiin S. Hussein, the strong cooperation that has been established across the police, region and municipality can be an advantage for the project here, as it provides a unique insight into the local security work, and a solid foundation for jointly strengthening the digital initiatives in the municipality. The Tryg Digital By project is a collaboration across the department for Job and Welfare and department for Children and Young People in Aalborg Municipality and the North Jutland Police.

 

Hatred must not stand unchallenged

 

In Nordic Safe Cities, they look forward to initiating the project together with Aalborg Municipality. The Tryg Digital By concept has been developed by Nordic Safe Cities, and together with 20 other Nordic cities, they look forward to using the experience and Nordic expertise to invest in Aalborg.

 “We know that if information is left unsaid for a long time, it can have the consequence that it ‘settles’, affects the individual, moves the boundaries of what the individual perceives as extreme, and normalizes the hateful and extreme speech,” says Deputy Director of Nordic Safe Cities, Lotte Fast Carlsen.

She continues, “This development is problematic. If we do not have a systematic understanding of what is going on in our digital streets, then local actors are often forced to act on vague images – or only when hatred has taken root in the physical environment. That is why it is so important that Aalborg has chosen, as the first municipality in Denmark, to investigate hate online, systematically, and thereby strengthen both the digital and physical prevention work. ”

  

Protect the democratic conversations

 

The project will help to provide a clear picture of both the hateful, but also the healthy conversations online, where good norms for dialogue and appreciative speech are present.

“One of the cornerstones of our democratic society is that we can express ourselves freely and without fear of being exposed to hatred and threats. Therefore, it is important to take the temperature of digital democracy and thereby promote the positive communities so that Danes can feel safe online and do not refrain from participating in the digital conversation “, says Christoffer Elbrønd, project manager at TrygFonden, who looks forward to following the project in Aalborg in the coming years.

The Tryg Digital By project is expected to be launched in March 2022 and also involves the two Danish analysis agencies Analyse & Tal and Common Consultancy, who will compose the analysis of the digital hate in Aalborg.

 

Contact information

Deputy Director Lotte Fast Carlsen, Nordic Safe Cities,

tel: +45 28 93 48 23, email: lotte@nordicsafecities.org

 

Facts about the hate algorithm:

 

Analyse & Tal F.M.B.A with the support of TrygFonden has developed the most advanced Danish-language algorithm to detect attacks in the public debate on social media. Based on assisted machine learning and deep learning technology, it is now possible to map the proportion of resp. attacks, offensive and hateful language in the commentary tracks of the public debate.

In the Tryg Digital By project, precisely this algorithm is used.

In order to analyse the many millions of comments that Danes leave on these forums each year, Analyse og Tal has developed two artificial intelligences that make it possible to estimate which topics are discussed digitally and the amount of attacks and recognition in the debate. Throughout the project, they have succeeded in training the two algorithms to a precision that in their field competes with the best in the world. The A&ttack algorithm approaches (with an F1 score 0.83) the human brain’s ability to detect and classify hate speech. The A&ttack algorithm’s assessment of 100 posts on social media being hateful is thus almost as accurate as a human assessment.

The algorithms have been released as open source with the aim that other projects and researchers will be able to use them to map the democratic debate.

It can be found here: A&ttack algorithm

A Swedish “translation” of this algorithm is also used in Sweden, where Malmö Municipality in collaboration with Nordic Safe Cities has tested the use of the algorithm at the local level