Student’s View on Hate Speech: Gamified Annotation for Educational Use

Online hate speech gains growing attention by educators and scientific researchers. Adolescents are highly active social media users and the majority of them experience or witness online hate speech. Therefore, educators are facing the challenge of how to handle the topic in an engaging and modern way. In prior work it has been shown that the understanding of hate speech varies depending on time, language, and topic. Another challenge is the small number of available data sets. This research addresses the problem of obtaining information to understand hate speech from the perspective of adolescents. Due to the difficulties of working with adolescents (e.g. data protection), it is challenging to create data sets for this specific subgroup. This research closes the gap by presenting a gamified annotation tool to be used in educational workshops within schools. Students are enabled to perform hate speech annotations in a controlled gamified environment. The gamified solution supplies schools with a live and realistic setting for a modern and motivational way to interact with the topic. This research demonstrates how to use the setting of educating students on the topic of hate speech in a safe space while understanding their perspective on hate speech.