MemeScouts@LT-EDI 2026: Asking the Right Questions -- Prompted Weak Supervision for Meme Hate Speech Detection

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Main Authors: Bueno, Ivo, Hirlimann, Lea, Kasneci, Enkelejda
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Bueno, Ivo
Hirlimann, Lea
Kasneci, Enkelejda
author_facet Bueno, Ivo
Hirlimann, Lea
Kasneci, Enkelejda
contents Detecting hate speech in memes is challenging due to their multimodal nature and subtle, culturally grounded cues such as sarcasm and context. While recent vision-language models (VLMs) enable joint reasoning over text and images, end-to-end prompting can be brittle, as a single prediction must resolve target, stance, implicitness, and irony. These challenges are amplified in multilingual settings. We propose a prompted weak supervision (PWS) approach that decomposes meme understanding into targeted, question-based labeling functions with constrained answer options for homophobia and transphobia detection in the LT-EDI 2026 shared task. Using a quantized Qwen3-VLM to extract features by answering targeted questions, our method outperforms direct VLM classification, with substantial gains for Chinese and Hindi, ranking 1st in English, 2nd in Chinese, and 3rd in Hindi. Iterative refinement via error-driven LF expansion and feature pruning reduces redundancy and improves generalization. Our results highlight the effectiveness of prompted weak supervision for multilingual multimodal hate speech detection.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_24179
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publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle MemeScouts@LT-EDI 2026: Asking the Right Questions -- Prompted Weak Supervision for Meme Hate Speech Detection
Bueno, Ivo
Hirlimann, Lea
Kasneci, Enkelejda
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Detecting hate speech in memes is challenging due to their multimodal nature and subtle, culturally grounded cues such as sarcasm and context. While recent vision-language models (VLMs) enable joint reasoning over text and images, end-to-end prompting can be brittle, as a single prediction must resolve target, stance, implicitness, and irony. These challenges are amplified in multilingual settings. We propose a prompted weak supervision (PWS) approach that decomposes meme understanding into targeted, question-based labeling functions with constrained answer options for homophobia and transphobia detection in the LT-EDI 2026 shared task. Using a quantized Qwen3-VLM to extract features by answering targeted questions, our method outperforms direct VLM classification, with substantial gains for Chinese and Hindi, ranking 1st in English, 2nd in Chinese, and 3rd in Hindi. Iterative refinement via error-driven LF expansion and feature pruning reduces redundancy and improves generalization. Our results highlight the effectiveness of prompted weak supervision for multilingual multimodal hate speech detection.
title MemeScouts@LT-EDI 2026: Asking the Right Questions -- Prompted Weak Supervision for Meme Hate Speech Detection
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.24179