Experimental Study on Cyberbullying Detection in Social Network: A comparison between Machine Learning and Transfer Learning Techniques

Speaker: Prof. Kasturi Dewi Varathan, University of Malaya, Malaysia

Abstract: The emergence of a number of online social media users has caused an increase in cyberbullying circumstances, and it is exacerbating into a major societal problem today. Identifying the cyberbullying event and the attacking messages is vital in defending against cyberbullying in cyberspace. The main objective of this research is to automate the detection of instances of cyberbullying from the disorderly post, considering the issue as a text classification task with the aid of cutting-edge techniques using artificial intelligence and knowledge of natural language processing.  Experimental studies were performed to detect cyberbullying using 2 different approaches:  machine learning and transfer learning approaches. This study used AMiCA (Automatic Monitoring for Cyberspace Application) dataset, which consists of 113, 694 posts. The transfer learning technique with pre-trained language models gives a higher level of effectiveness compared to the machine learning techniques. In this seminar, I outline how this could be achieved.

Biography: Kasturi Dewi Varathan, is currently an associate professor at the Faculty of Computer Science & Information Technology, University of Malaya, Malaysia. She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the National University of Malaysia. Her main research focus is in the field of text analytics and health informatics. Dr.Kasturi has published in several high-ranked journals and conferences. Her research on data analytics won several awards in international and national level competitions. Dr.Kasturi has also secured national and international grants. Some of the prominent grants that she has received are Prototype Research Grant from the Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia and a SERI Grant from Switzerland.  She is also a recipient of the prestigious Leadership in Innovation Fellowship award by the United Kingdom and Malaysian Government.

Host: Prof. Fabio Crestani