Snarci at SemEval-2024 Task 4: Themis Model for Binary Classification of Memes

Luca Zedda, Alessandra Perniciano, Andrea Loddo, Cecilia Di Ruberto, Manuela Sanguinetti, Maurizio Atzori


Abstract
This paper introduces an approach developed for multimodal meme analysis, specifically targeting the identification of persuasion techniques embedded within memes. Our methodology integrates Large Language Models (LLMs) and contrastive learning image encoders to discern the presence of persuasive elements in memes across diverse platforms. By capitalizing on the contextual understanding facilitated by LLMs and the discriminative power of contrastive learning for image encoding, our framework provides a robust solution for detecting and classifying memes with persuasion techniques. The system was used in Task 4 of Semeval 2024, precisely for Substask 2b (binary classification of presence of persuasion techniques). It showed promising results overall, achieving a Macro-F1=0.7986 on the English test data (i.e., the language the system was trained on) and Macro-F1=0.66777/0.47917/0.5554, respectively, on the other three “surprise” languages proposed by the task organizers, i.e., Bulgarian, North Macedonian and Arabic. The paper provides an overview of the system, along with a discussion of the results obtained and its main limitations.
Anthology ID:
2024.semeval-1.122
Volume:
Proceedings of the 18th International Workshop on Semantic Evaluation (SemEval-2024)
Month:
June
Year:
2024
Address:
Mexico City, Mexico
Editors:
Atul Kr. Ojha, A. Seza Doğruöz, Harish Tayyar Madabushi, Giovanni Da San Martino, Sara Rosenthal, Aiala Rosá
Venue:
SemEval
SIG:
SIGLEX
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
853–858
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.semeval-1.122
DOI:
10.18653/v1/2024.semeval-1.122
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Luca Zedda, Alessandra Perniciano, Andrea Loddo, Cecilia Di Ruberto, Manuela Sanguinetti, and Maurizio Atzori. 2024. Snarci at SemEval-2024 Task 4: Themis Model for Binary Classification of Memes. In Proceedings of the 18th International Workshop on Semantic Evaluation (SemEval-2024), pages 853–858, Mexico City, Mexico. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Snarci at SemEval-2024 Task 4: Themis Model for Binary Classification of Memes (Zedda et al., SemEval 2024)
Copy Citation:
PDF:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/dois-2013-emnlp/2024.semeval-1.122.pdf
Supplementary material:
 2024.semeval-1.122.SupplementaryMaterial.txt
Supplementary material:
 2024.semeval-1.122.SupplementaryMaterial.zip