Tina Nguyen, PhD
Clinical Ethics Fellow
Institute for Bioethics & Health Humanities
The University of Texas Medical Branch

HEC 3.201

Register HERE in advance for the Zoom lecture

The COVID-19 pandemic sparked a rise in misinformation from various media sources, which contributed to the heightened severity of hate speech. The upsurgence of hate speech online has devastatingly translated to real-life hate crimes, which saw an increase of 32% in 2020 in the United States alone (U.S. Department of Justice 2022). In this talk, the current effects of hate speech are explored and serves as justification as to why hate speech should be widely recognized as a public health issue. In addition to the public health side, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) strategies have been developed to mitigate hate speech. However, these two contrasting methodologies (public health versus AI/ML) applied by themselves are not efficient or sustainable. Therefore, a third approach is proposed that combines both AI/ML and public health. With this proposed approach, the reactive side of AI/ML and the preventative nature of public health measures are united to develop an effective manner of addressing the problem of hate speech.