@inproceedings{cheng-etal-2026-dr,
title = "{DR}-{HM}: Distill-then-Reinforce Training with Cognition-Aware Data Synthesis for Harmful Meme Detection",
author = "Cheng, Zihan and
Ma, Jianxiang and
Yang, Xiaocui and
Wang, Peidong and
Zhang, Wen and
Feng, Shi and
Wang, Daling and
Zhang, Yifei and
Zhang, Mingfu",
editor = "Liakata, Maria and
Moreira, Viviane P. and
Zhang, Jiajun and
Jurgens, David",
booktitle = "Findings of the {A}ssociation for {C}omputational {L}inguistics: {ACL} 2026",
month = jul,
year = "2026",
address = "San Diego, California, United States",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.2130/",
pages = "42975--42993",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-395-1",
abstract = "Harmful memes convey offensive intent through implicit associations between visual symbols and text, requiring a broad understanding of cultural stereotypes and visual metaphors. Small-scale Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) often lack the knowledge required to identify such implicit hate, whereas Large-scale MLLMs, despite their broader knowledge, exhibit systematic labeling bias. To address these challenges, we propose DR-HM, a Distill-then-Reinforce training framework with cognition-aware data synthesis for harmful meme detection, which aims to transfer knowledge from closed-source models while mitigating their biases. DR-HM introduces a six-step structured data synthesis scheme with self-refinement that decomposes meme analysis into a progressive, human-inspired reasoning process from entity recognition to harmfulness judgment. Based on the synthesized reasoning data, we further adopt a Distill-then-Reinforce training strategy. This approach combines a two-stage Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) with an Adaptive Group Relative Policy Optimization (A-GRPO) algorithm, which incorporates class-ratio-aware reward weighting and dynamic KL coefficients. Experiments on three benchmark datasets show that the proposed approach consistently outperforms existing methods and achieves an accuracy of 84.7{\%} on the FHM dataset, approaching the reported performance of human annotators."
}<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<modsCollection xmlns="http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3">
<mods ID="cheng-etal-2026-dr">
<titleInfo>
<title>DR-HM: Distill-then-Reinforce Training with Cognition-Aware Data Synthesis for Harmful Meme Detection</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Zihan</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Cheng</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Jianxiang</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Ma</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Xiaocui</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Yang</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Peidong</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Wang</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Wen</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Zhang</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Shi</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Feng</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Daling</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Wang</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Yifei</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Zhang</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Mingfu</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Zhang</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<dateIssued>2026-07</dateIssued>
</originInfo>
<typeOfResource>text</typeOfResource>
<relatedItem type="host">
<titleInfo>
<title>Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Maria</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Liakata</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Viviane</namePart>
<namePart type="given">P</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Moreira</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Jiajun</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Zhang</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">David</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Jurgens</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<publisher>Association for Computational Linguistics</publisher>
<place>
<placeTerm type="text">San Diego, California, United States</placeTerm>
</place>
</originInfo>
<genre authority="marcgt">conference publication</genre>
<identifier type="isbn">979-8-89176-395-1</identifier>
</relatedItem>
<abstract>Harmful memes convey offensive intent through implicit associations between visual symbols and text, requiring a broad understanding of cultural stereotypes and visual metaphors. Small-scale Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) often lack the knowledge required to identify such implicit hate, whereas Large-scale MLLMs, despite their broader knowledge, exhibit systematic labeling bias. To address these challenges, we propose DR-HM, a Distill-then-Reinforce training framework with cognition-aware data synthesis for harmful meme detection, which aims to transfer knowledge from closed-source models while mitigating their biases. DR-HM introduces a six-step structured data synthesis scheme with self-refinement that decomposes meme analysis into a progressive, human-inspired reasoning process from entity recognition to harmfulness judgment. Based on the synthesized reasoning data, we further adopt a Distill-then-Reinforce training strategy. This approach combines a two-stage Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) with an Adaptive Group Relative Policy Optimization (A-GRPO) algorithm, which incorporates class-ratio-aware reward weighting and dynamic KL coefficients. Experiments on three benchmark datasets show that the proposed approach consistently outperforms existing methods and achieves an accuracy of 84.7% on the FHM dataset, approaching the reported performance of human annotators.</abstract>
<identifier type="citekey">cheng-etal-2026-dr</identifier>
<location>
<url>https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.2130/</url>
</location>
<part>
<date>2026-07</date>
<extent unit="page">
<start>42975</start>
<end>42993</end>
</extent>
</part>
</mods>
</modsCollection>
%0 Conference Proceedings
%T DR-HM: Distill-then-Reinforce Training with Cognition-Aware Data Synthesis for Harmful Meme Detection
%A Cheng, Zihan
%A Ma, Jianxiang
%A Yang, Xiaocui
%A Wang, Peidong
%A Zhang, Wen
%A Feng, Shi
%A Wang, Daling
%A Zhang, Yifei
%A Zhang, Mingfu
%Y Liakata, Maria
%Y Moreira, Viviane P.
%Y Zhang, Jiajun
%Y Jurgens, David
%S Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026
%D 2026
%8 July
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C San Diego, California, United States
%@ 979-8-89176-395-1
%F cheng-etal-2026-dr
%X Harmful memes convey offensive intent through implicit associations between visual symbols and text, requiring a broad understanding of cultural stereotypes and visual metaphors. Small-scale Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) often lack the knowledge required to identify such implicit hate, whereas Large-scale MLLMs, despite their broader knowledge, exhibit systematic labeling bias. To address these challenges, we propose DR-HM, a Distill-then-Reinforce training framework with cognition-aware data synthesis for harmful meme detection, which aims to transfer knowledge from closed-source models while mitigating their biases. DR-HM introduces a six-step structured data synthesis scheme with self-refinement that decomposes meme analysis into a progressive, human-inspired reasoning process from entity recognition to harmfulness judgment. Based on the synthesized reasoning data, we further adopt a Distill-then-Reinforce training strategy. This approach combines a two-stage Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) with an Adaptive Group Relative Policy Optimization (A-GRPO) algorithm, which incorporates class-ratio-aware reward weighting and dynamic KL coefficients. Experiments on three benchmark datasets show that the proposed approach consistently outperforms existing methods and achieves an accuracy of 84.7% on the FHM dataset, approaching the reported performance of human annotators.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.2130/
%P 42975-42993
Markdown (Informal)
[DR-HM: Distill-then-Reinforce Training with Cognition-Aware Data Synthesis for Harmful Meme Detection](https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.2130/) (Cheng et al., Findings 2026)
ACL
- Zihan Cheng, Jianxiang Ma, Xiaocui Yang, Peidong Wang, Wen Zhang, Shi Feng, Daling Wang, Yifei Zhang, and Mingfu Zhang. 2026. DR-HM: Distill-then-Reinforce Training with Cognition-Aware Data Synthesis for Harmful Meme Detection. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026, pages 42975–42993, San Diego, California, United States. Association for Computational Linguistics.