Pauk at SemEval-2024 Task 4: A Neuro-Symbolic Method for Consistent Classification of Propaganda Techniques in Memes

Matt Pauk, Maria Leonor Pacheco


Abstract
Memes play a key role in most modern informa-tion campaigns, particularly propaganda cam-paigns. Identifying the persuasive techniquespresent in memes is an important step in de-veloping systems to recognize and curtail pro-paganda. This work presents a framework toidentify the persuasive techniques present inmemes for the SemEval 2024 Task 4, accordingto a hierarchical taxonomy of propaganda tech-niques. The framework involves a knowledgedistillation method, where the base model is acombination of DeBERTa and ResNET usedto classify the text and image, and the teachermodel consists of a group of weakly enforcedlogic rules that promote the hierarchy of per-suasion techniques. The addition of the logicrule layer for knowledge distillation shows im-provement in respecting the hierarchy of thetaxonomy with a slight boost in performance.
Anthology ID:
2024.semeval-1.204
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:
1424–1434
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.semeval-1.204
DOI:
10.18653/v1/2024.semeval-1.204
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Matt Pauk and Maria Leonor Pacheco. 2024. Pauk at SemEval-2024 Task 4: A Neuro-Symbolic Method for Consistent Classification of Propaganda Techniques in Memes. In Proceedings of the 18th International Workshop on Semantic Evaluation (SemEval-2024), pages 1424–1434, Mexico City, Mexico. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Pauk at SemEval-2024 Task 4: A Neuro-Symbolic Method for Consistent Classification of Propaganda Techniques in Memes (Pauk & Pacheco, SemEval 2024)
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PDF:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/nschneid-patch-4/2024.semeval-1.204.pdf
Supplementary material:
 2024.semeval-1.204.SupplementaryMaterial.txt
Supplementary material:
 2024.semeval-1.204.SupplementaryMaterial.zip