It uses text analysis of speech and written content (including radio transcripts, transcripts of spoken web content, tweets, and articles) and identification of hate speech patterns within it to predict potential regional violence.
The first is a Wikipedia-like interface which allows users to identify hate speech terms by region and the group they refer to.
This could have some value for researchers, but Hatebase's developers are especially excited by the second main feature, which allows users to identify instances when they've heard these terms used.
[4] The regional and multilingual focus of the site was deemed particularly useful for identifying words that could be construed as hate in some languages and contexts but that outsiders would not know of, such as the word "sakkiliya" in Sinhalese (the language in Sri Lanka) used to refer to a Tamil person as 'a very unhygienic or uncultured person'[6] or the reference to Tutsis as cockroaches by the Rwandan radio stations, that an outsider may simply consider evidence that the region was suffering from a literal cockroach infestation.
[5] A week later, the magazine published a response letter by Gwyneth Sutherlin, a doctoral candidate at the University of Bradford, pointing out potential problems and limitations of the approach used by Hatebase.