Can NLP Tackle Hate Speech in the Real World? Stakeholder-Informed Feedback and Survey on Counterspeech
This work addresses the problem of misalignment between NLP research and real-world needs in counterspeech for affected communities, highlighting an incremental gap in stakeholder involvement.
The paper systematically reviewed 74 NLP studies on counterspeech and conducted a participatory case study with NGOs, revealing a growing disconnect between NLP research and the needs of communities impacted by online hate speech, and providing recommendations to re-centre stakeholder expertise.
Counterspeech, i.e. the practice of responding to online hate speech, has gained traction in NLP as a promising intervention. While early work emphasised collaboration with non-governmental organisation stakeholders, recent research trends have shifted toward automated pipelines that reuse a small set of legacy datasets, often without input from affected communities. This paper presents a systematic review of 74 NLP studies on counterspeech, analysing the extent to which stakeholder participation influences dataset creation, model development, and evaluation. To complement this analysis, we conducted a participatory case study with five NGOs specialising in online Gender-Based Violence (oGBV), identifying stakeholder-informed practices for counterspeech generation. Our findings reveal a growing disconnect between current NLP research and the needs of communities most impacted by toxic online content. We conclude with concrete recommendations for re-centring stakeholder expertise in counterspeech research.