Navigating Dialectal Bias and Ethical Complexities in Levantine Arabic Hate Speech Detection

Ahmed Haj Ahmed, Rui-Jie Yew, Xerxes Minocher, Suresh Venkatasubramanian


Abstract
Social media platforms have become central to global communication, yet they also facilitate the spread of hate speech. For underrepresented dialects like Levantine Arabic, detecting hate speech presents unique cultural, ethical, and linguistic challenges. This paper explores the complex sociopolitical and linguistic landscape of Levantine Arabic and critically examines the limitations of current datasets used in hate speech detection. We highlight the scarcity of publicly available, diverse datasets and analyze the consequences of dialectal bias within existing resources. By emphasizing the need for culturally and contextually informed natural language processing (NLP) tools, we advocate for a more nuanced and inclusive approach to hate speech detection in the Arab world.
Anthology ID:
2025.wacl-1.12
Volume:
Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Arabic Corpus Linguistics (WACL-4)
Month:
January
Year:
2025
Address:
Abu Dhabi, UAE
Editors:
Saad Ezzini, Hamza Alami, Ismail Berrada, Abdessamad Benlahbib, Abdelkader El Mahdaouy, Salima Lamsiyah, Hatim Derrouz, Amal Haddad Haddad, Mustafa Jarrar, Mo El-Haj, Ruslan Mitkov, Paul Rayson
Venues:
WACL | WS
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
103–108
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2025.wacl-1.12/
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Ahmed Haj Ahmed, Rui-Jie Yew, Xerxes Minocher, and Suresh Venkatasubramanian. 2025. Navigating Dialectal Bias and Ethical Complexities in Levantine Arabic Hate Speech Detection. In Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Arabic Corpus Linguistics (WACL-4), pages 103–108, Abu Dhabi, UAE. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Navigating Dialectal Bias and Ethical Complexities in Levantine Arabic Hate Speech Detection (Haj Ahmed et al., WACL 2025)
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PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2025.wacl-1.12.pdf