Characterizing and detecting hateful users on twitter

Manoel Horta Ribeiro, Pedro H. Calais, Yuri A. Santos, Virgílio A.F. Almeida, Wagner Meira

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

152 Scopus citations

Abstract

Current approaches to characterize and detect hate speech focus on content posted in Online Social Networks (OSNs). They face shortcomings to get the full picture of hate speech due to its subjectivity and the noisiness of OSN text. This work partially addresses these issues by shifting the focus towards users. We obtain a sample of Twitter's retweet graph with 100, 386 users and annotate 4, 972 as hateful or normal, and also find 668 users suspended after 4 months. Our analysis shows that hateful/suspended users differ from normal/active ones in terms of their activity patterns, word usage and network structure. Exploiting Twitter's network of connections, we find that a node embedding algorithm outperforms content-based approaches for detecting both hateful and suspended users. Overall, we present a user-centric view of hate speech, paving the way for better detection and understanding of this relevant and challenging issue.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication12th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, ICWSM 2018
PublisherAAAI press
Pages676-679
Number of pages4
ISBN (Electronic)9781577357988
StatePublished - 2018
Externally publishedYes
Event12th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, ICWSM 2018 - Palo Alto, United States
Duration: Jun 25 2018Jun 28 2018

Publication series

Name12th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, ICWSM 2018

Conference

Conference12th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, ICWSM 2018
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityPalo Alto
Period6/25/186/28/18

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Computer Networks and Communications

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Characterizing and detecting hateful users on twitter'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this