INACH Webinar Series: Welcoming Public Discourse Foundation (PDF)
Written by: Fox Oliver.
At the start of April, Public Discourse Foundation (PDF), INACH’s newest member, led a webinar for members of the network. Morgane Bonvallat, Head of Civil Society at PDF, explained who they are, their foci, and their recent research projects aimed at monitoring and tackling hate speech.
PDF’s goal is to improve public discourse by making it more “inclusive, freer, and more democratic,” and does so by developing scalable, research-based solutions to issues such as toxic and hate speech. Based in Zurich, PDF evolved out of their 2019 Stop Hate Speech project, which initially centered around the development of an algorithm to address the unique Swiss media landscape and detect hate speech in both French and German. In 2023, PDF was founded, acting to bridge science with society. They keep a strong focus on research and innovation, while also advocating, engaging civil society members, and collaborating with media outlets directly to improve discourse quality.
During the webinar, Bonvallat shared details about a number of PDF’s research projects. One project, their Public Discourse Indicator, aggregates data about comments posted on Swiss news websites over time and identifies how much of that content is classified as toxic and hate speech, displaying it on a timeline annotated with notable events. Findings from this indicator show that 5.4% of comments in 2025 consisted of hate speech, however most of these (78%) hate comments came from a very small proportion (5%) of all commenters. Other research which sparked discussion during the webinar found that empathy-based methods of counterspeech were more effective than other approaches in reducing the prevalence of xenophonic tweets, and that specifically inviting posters to draw an analogy from their own lives to the person they were attacking was an especially effective version of this counterspeech.
Public Discourse Indicator: Image presented during the webinar.
PDF’s upcoming projects include the publishing of a guide about how to protect oneself against frequent online hate speech attacks, a study on which solutions against hate speech make democracy workers (e.g., politicians, journalists) feel the most protected online, and research to understand the effects of policy changes on youths’ social media use.
From their valuable and practice-oriented research to their civil-society advocacy, it is clear that PDF is working to make a difference in fighting hate speech and encouraging public discourse which is diverse, welcoming, and pluralistic. We look forward to seeing the completion of PDF’s upcoming projects, and how their work can continue to contribute to advancing our shared mission.
Welcome, Public Discourse Foundation!