Directions for NLP Practices Applied to Online Hate Speech Detection

Paula Fortuna, Monica Dominguez, Leo Wanner, Zeerak Talat


Abstract
Addressing hate speech in online spaces has been conceptualized as a classification task that uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques. Through this conceptualization, the hate speech detection task has relied on common conventions and practices from NLP. For instance, inter-annotator agreement is conceptualized as a way to measure dataset quality and certain metrics and benchmarks are used to assure model generalization. However, hate speech is a deeply complex and situated concept that eludes such static and disembodied practices. In this position paper, we critically reflect on these methodologies for hate speech detection, we argue that many conventions in NLP are poorly suited for the problem and encourage researchers to develop methods that are more appropriate for the task.
Anthology ID:
2022.emnlp-main.809
Volume:
Proceedings of the 2022 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing
Month:
December
Year:
2022
Address:
Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Editors:
Yoav Goldberg, Zornitsa Kozareva, Yue Zhang
Venue:
EMNLP
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
11794–11805
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2022.emnlp-main.809
DOI:
10.18653/v1/2022.emnlp-main.809
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Paula Fortuna, Monica Dominguez, Leo Wanner, and Zeerak Talat. 2022. Directions for NLP Practices Applied to Online Hate Speech Detection. In Proceedings of the 2022 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, pages 11794–11805, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Directions for NLP Practices Applied to Online Hate Speech Detection (Fortuna et al., EMNLP 2022)
Copy Citation:
PDF:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/naacl24-info/2022.emnlp-main.809.pdf