Abstract Recent work on language technology has aimed to identify negative language such as hate speech and cyberbullying as well as improve offensive language detection to mediate social media platforms. Most of these systems rely on using machine learning models along with the labelled dataset. Such models have succeeded in identifying negativity and removing it from the platform deleting it. However, recently, more research has been conducted on the improvement of freedom of speech on social media. Instead of deleting supposedly offensive speech, we developed a multilingual dataset to identify hope speech in the comments and promote positivity. This paper presents a multilingual hope speech dataset that promotes equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in English, Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada. It was collected to promote positivity and ensure EDI in language technology. Our dataset is unique, as it contains data collected from the LGBTQIA+ community, persons with disabilities and women in science, engineering, technology and management (STEM). We also report our benchmark system results in various machine learning models. We experimented on the Hope Speech dataset for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (HopeEDI) using different state-of-the-art machine learning models and deep learning models to create benchmark systems.
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