NEW YORK --(BUSINESS WIRE)

In a digital age marked by algorithmic polarization and growing online hostility, AddressHate announces the appointment of renowned linguist and antisemitism expert Dr. Matthias J. Becker as Senior Research Advisor. This strategic addition deepens the think tank’s interdisciplinary mission: to decode, disrupt, and ultimately dismantle the viral dynamics of hate speech in online environments.

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Matthias J. Becker, Senior Research Advisor at AddressHate

Matthias J. Becker, Senior Research Advisor at AddressHate

Dr. Becker is the founder and principal investigator of Decoding Antisemitism, a pioneering European research initiative that combines expert linguistic annotation, AI-based analysis, and cross-national discourse studies to expose antisemitic patterns in digital media. He is also a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge, where his academic work bridges the fields of cognitive linguistics, discourse analysis, and social media studies.

“We’re building a coalition of minds that can not only expose hate, but also translate that understanding into real, systemic change,” said Joshua Laterman, founder of AddressHate. “Matthias brings the kind of rigor, compassion, and courage this moment requires. He helps us see what others overlook: the coded language of hate hiding in plain sight.”

Trained in Linguistics, Philosophy, and Literature at Freie Universität Berlin, Dr. Becker has spent over a decade analyzing the mechanics of antisemitic rhetoric across media landscapes. His influential monograph, Antisemitism in Reader Comments, published in English by Springer Nature in 2021, explores how antisemitic tropes and historical analogies subtly persist in British and German discourse on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Dr. Becker is also the coauthor (with Nima Veiseh) of AddressHate’s seminal White Paper “Confronting Digital Hate: An Interdisciplinary Tech-Driven Framework to Understand and Counter Online Antisemitism and Hate”.

“Hate speech rarely announces itself. In the digital age, it often enters disguised — through irony, rhetorical deflection, or historical analogy — and is amplified by algorithms indifferent to context,” said Nima Veiseh, Founding Director of AddressHate, who started his career as a researcher at the MIT Media Lab. “As social media and artificial intelligence increasingly mediate our public discourse, the need to decode these implicit forms of hostility becomes urgent. Dr. Becker’s work equips us with analytical frameworks to detect and disrupt these patterns before they become culturally embedded. At AddressHate, we are building and empowering an interdisciplinary, apolitical community of researchers and practitioners who can inform sustainable, human-centered governance of digital spaces.”

In October 2024, Becker edited and released the DA Lexicon, an open-access reference work with over 45 chapters analyzing the evolving language of online Jew-hatred. Within weeks of publication, it had been downloaded over 190,000 times — a signal of both urgency and public hunger for deeper understanding.

AddressHate: Translating Research into Public Good

Formerly an initiative of the Laterman Family Foundation, AddressHate is an independent New York-based think tank confronting digital hate through rigorous research, policy engagement, public education, and creative interventions. The organization is building a multilingual, interdisciplinary, and intercultural network of scholars, technologists, artists, and civic leaders committed to eradicating online hate while protecting freedom of expression.

This appointment marks a key milestone as AddressHate prepares to release its first round of public datasets and launch an academic journal focused on digital discourse and social harm in 2026. Becker will serve under Director Nima Veiseh as a founding member of the journal’s team and will help steer the organization’s AI ethics and language annotation protocols.

Melissa M. Krantz
Krantz and Company
[email protected]
917-653-6716

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