For more than a decade, researchers at Cardiff University have combined criminology, social science, data science and machine learning to understand how hate develops and spreads online and how it can be countered.
The ESRC funded HateLab brought these disciplines together. Its research generated new evidence about the relationship between online and offline hate, while its researchers developed machine-learning methods capable of identifying harmful content at a scale no human team could manage alone.
A central product of this work was the HateLab Dashboard. Developed with policy and practice partners, it enabled organisations to monitor aggregate patterns in online hate speech and identify changes around major public events. Between 2020 and 2021, the Dashboard was piloted with Welsh Government, the National Online Hate Crime Hub and LGBTQIA+ anti-violence charity Galop. Their operational knowledge helped shape the technology around the needs of practitioners.
In 2023, HateLab founders Professor Matt Williams and Professor Pete Burnap established nisien.ai as a Cardiff University spin-out. The purpose was to create a commercial route through which its research and technology could be developed, deployed and supported at scale.
The original Dashboard technology evolved into the HERO (Harms Evaluation and Response Operations) platform. HERO combines automated classification with human expertise to help organisations distinguish genuine risks from the wider volume of online conversation. Its applications now extend beyond hate speech to abuse, misinformation, AI-generated content, reputational threats and the safeguarding of people exposed to intense public attention.
HateLab remains the academic research and evidence base: investigating online and offline harm, evaluating interventions and contributing to public policy. nisien.ai provides the vehicle for turning that work into operational products and services for sport, technology, entertainment, government and civil society.
Together, the two organisations demonstrate how interdisciplinary university research can progress from academic discovery to practical tools that protect people and strengthen online communities.
Read about the HERO platform