Will I Get Hate Speech Predicting the Volume of Abusive Replies before Posting in Social Media

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Alharthi, Raneem, Alharthi, Rajwa, Shekhar, Ravi, Jiang, Aiqi, Zubiaga, Arkaitz
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Alharthi, Raneem
Alharthi, Rajwa
Shekhar, Ravi
Jiang, Aiqi
Zubiaga, Arkaitz
author_facet Alharthi, Raneem
Alharthi, Rajwa
Shekhar, Ravi
Jiang, Aiqi
Zubiaga, Arkaitz
contents Despite the growing body of research tackling offensive language in social media, this research is predominantly reactive, determining if content already posted in social media is abusive. There is a gap in predictive approaches, which we address in our study by enabling to predict the volume of abusive replies a tweet will receive after being posted. We formulate the problem from the perspective of a social media user asking: ``if I post a certain message on social media, is it possible to predict the volume of abusive replies it might receive?'' We look at four types of features, namely text, text metadata, tweet metadata, and account features, which also help us understand the extent to which the user or the content helps predict the number of abusive replies. This, in turn, helps us develop a model to support social media users in finding the best way to post content. One of our objectives is also to determine the extent to which the volume of abusive replies that a tweet will get are motivated by the content of the tweet or by the identity of the user posting it. Our study finds that one can build a model that performs competitively by developing a comprehensive set of features derived from the content of the message that is going to be posted. In addition, our study suggests that features derived from the user's identity do not impact model performance, hence suggesting that it is especially the content of a post that triggers abusive replies rather than who the user is.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_03005
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Will I Get Hate Speech Predicting the Volume of Abusive Replies before Posting in Social Media
Alharthi, Raneem
Alharthi, Rajwa
Shekhar, Ravi
Jiang, Aiqi
Zubiaga, Arkaitz
Computation and Language
Despite the growing body of research tackling offensive language in social media, this research is predominantly reactive, determining if content already posted in social media is abusive. There is a gap in predictive approaches, which we address in our study by enabling to predict the volume of abusive replies a tweet will receive after being posted. We formulate the problem from the perspective of a social media user asking: ``if I post a certain message on social media, is it possible to predict the volume of abusive replies it might receive?'' We look at four types of features, namely text, text metadata, tweet metadata, and account features, which also help us understand the extent to which the user or the content helps predict the number of abusive replies. This, in turn, helps us develop a model to support social media users in finding the best way to post content. One of our objectives is also to determine the extent to which the volume of abusive replies that a tweet will get are motivated by the content of the tweet or by the identity of the user posting it. Our study finds that one can build a model that performs competitively by developing a comprehensive set of features derived from the content of the message that is going to be posted. In addition, our study suggests that features derived from the user's identity do not impact model performance, hence suggesting that it is especially the content of a post that triggers abusive replies rather than who the user is.
title Will I Get Hate Speech Predicting the Volume of Abusive Replies before Posting in Social Media
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.03005