User:Syrenka V/Documenting Hate

NOTE: THIS DRAFT HAS NOW GONE LIVE IN MAINSPACE AT Documenting Hate AS OF 2017-08-23.

<!-- Documenting Hate is a project of ProPublica, in collaboration with a number of journalistic, academic, and computing organizations, for systematic tracking of hate crimes and bias incidents. It uses an online form to facilitate reporting of crimes by the general public. Since August 2017, it has also used machine learning and natural language processing techniques to monitor and collect news stories about hate crimes and bias incidents.

Origin
Documenting Hate was created in response to ProPublica's dissatisfaction with the quality of reporting and tracking of evidence of hate crimes and bias incidents after the United States presidential election of 2016. The project was launched on January 17, 2017, after the publication on November 15, 2016 of a ProPublica news story about the difficulty of obtaining hard data on hate crimes.

Introduction of the Documenting Hate News Index
On August 18, 2017, ProPublica and Google announced the creation of the Documenting Hate News Index, which uses the Google Cloud Natural Language API for automated monitoring and collection of news stories about hate crimes and bias incidents. The API uses machine learning and natural language processing techniques. The findings of the Index are integrated with reports from members of the public. The Index is a joint project of ProPublica, Google News Lab, and the data visualization studio Pitch Interactive.

Response
As of May 2017, thousands of incidents had been reported via Documenting Hate. An education reporter for the conservative Daily Caller has criticized the project for ambiguity in the terms it uses to describe hate crimes, and for neglect of hate-crime hoaxes. Another Daily Caller journalist has likewise criticized the Documenting Hate News Index for underrepresentation of conservative outlets among the news sources it monitors. A policy analyst for the Center for Data Innovation (an affiliate of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation), while supporting ProPublica's critique of the present state of hate-crime statistics, and praising ProPublica for drawing attention to the problem, has argued that a nongovernmental project like Documenting Hate cannot solve it unaided; instead, intervention at the federal level is needed.