Information (Aug 2023)

Development of Technologies for the Detection of (Cyber)Bullying Actions: The BullyBuster Project

  • Giulia Orrù,
  • Antonio Galli,
  • Vincenzo Gattulli,
  • Michela Gravina,
  • Marco Micheletto,
  • Stefano Marrone,
  • Wanda Nocerino,
  • Angela Procaccino,
  • Grazia Terrone,
  • Donatella Curtotti,
  • Donato Impedovo,
  • Gian Luca Marcialis,
  • Carlo Sansone

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/info14080430
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 14, no. 8
p. 430

Abstract

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Bullying and cyberbullying are harmful social phenomena that involve the intentional, repeated use of power to intimidate or harm others. The ramifications of these actions are felt not just at the individual level but also pervasively throughout society, necessitating immediate attention and practical solutions. The BullyBuster project pioneers a multi-disciplinary approach, integrating artificial intelligence (AI) techniques with psychological models to comprehensively understand and combat these issues. In particular, employing AI in the project allows the automatic identification of potentially harmful content by analyzing linguistic patterns and behaviors in various data sources, including photos and videos. This timely detection enables alerts to relevant authorities or moderators, allowing for rapid interventions and potential harm mitigation. This paper, a culmination of previous research and advancements, details the potential for significantly enhancing cyberbullying detection and prevention by focusing on the system’s design and the novel application of AI classifiers within an integrated framework. Our primary aim is to evaluate the feasibility and applicability of such a framework in a real-world application context. The proposed approach is shown to tackle the pervasive issue of cyberbullying effectively.

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