Zero Record project uses NLP to analyze censorship

A new transnational project investigates the erasure of gender-based violence and child abuse from Turkish digital media.

“When a statistic on gender-based violence disappears, a woman disappears twice”. KoWi’s new transnational research project Zero Record  by CORRECTIV and Public Spheres and Inequalities (PSI) Division at the Department of Communication Studies, University of Salzburg, investigates the systematic erasure femicide, child abuse, and gender-based violence from Turkish digital media. Project Zero Record is selected by the Journalism Science Alliance and funded by the European Union.

Using NLP and computational analysis, Viera Zuborova, Director of the Correctiv.Exile Section, and Hanan Badr, Professor at Department of Communication Studies, lead a team to examine more than 900 deleted articles preserved on a blockchain database — producing the first data-driven forensic account of this censorship.

Zero Record investigates how converge on femicides, child abuse, and gender-based violence is erased from the Turkish digital media landscape. The project is collaboration between the Correctiv.Exile of CORRECTIV (Germany) and the Public Spheres and Inequalities (PSI) Division at the Department of Communication Studies, University of Salzburg. 

Findings will be published as long-form investigative reports, an open-access interactive data visualization, and a policy brief on press freedom and gender equality. More on the project