Antisemitism has long been prevalent on social media, but it surged dramatically following the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel and the ongoing war in Gaza. 

The 2025 Datathon & Machine Learning Competition offers high school and college students worldwide a unique opportunity to engage in cutting-edge research at the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism (ISCA). Over three weeks, participants will attend a series of interactive workshops exploring: 

• Understanding Antisemitism: How is it defined? How has it manifested online before and after October 7? 

• Machine Learning & Online Hate: How can AI help identify antisemitism on social media? What are its limitations? 

• Intelligent Data Scraping & Sampling: How can tools like Bright Data be leveraged to collect and analyze social media data effectively? 

• The Role of Manual Annotation: Why is human review essential for training automated detection models? How do you accurately annotate tweets? 

• Building Detection Models: What computing techniques and machine learning algorithms can be used to predict online content? How do you develop these models? 

After completing the workshops, teams will use the Bright Initiative’s tool to create data samples and manually annotate a dataset of tweets related to Jewish life and antisemitism. They will then be provided with larger annotated datasets to train their own machine learning models for automatically identifying antisemitic content. Teams will be evaluated based on the innovation of their data sampling methods, the accuracy of their manual annotations, and the performance of their trained models. 

For more details, check out last year’s competition. 

 

How to Apply 

You can apply as a team of 4-5 people or as an individual, and we’ll match you with a team. (Most applicants apply individually.) 

Prizes 

🏆 Top three teams will receive: 

• 1st place: $500 VISA/Amazon gift card* 

• 2nd place: $300 VISA/Amazon gift card* 

• 3rd place: $200 VISA/Amazon gift card* 

*Gift card type will be determined based on local regulations. 

 

Eligibility & Requirements 

✅ Free to enter – no participation fee 
✅ No prior experience required (basic programming knowledge is helpful) 
✅ Open to all high school and undergraduate students worldwide 
✅ Must have access to a computer & internet (all workshops are conducted via Zoom) 

 

Workshop Schedule 

📅 June 15, 2025 @ 12PM EST – What is Online Antisemitism Before and After October 7? 
📅 June 22, 2025 @ 12PM EST – Data Scraping with Bright Data and Manual Annotation for Automated Content Detection: Processes and Challenges 
📅 June 29, 2025 @ 12PM EST – Basics of Automated Content Detection 

Don't miss this chance to develop real-world skills in data science, machine learning, and social media analysis—all while contributing to research on a critical global issue. 

Apply now!