Vaidhegi D


2023

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SSNTech2@LT-EDI-2023: Homophobia/Transphobia Detection in Social Media Comments Using Linear Classification Techniques
Vaidhegi D | Priya M | Rajalakshmi Sivanaiah | Angel Deborah S | Mirnalinee ThankaNadar
Proceedings of the Third Workshop on Language Technology for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

The abusive content on social media networks is causing destructive effects on the mental well-being of online users. Homophobia refers to the fear, negative attitudes and feeling towards homosexuality. Transphobia refer to negative attitudes, hatred and prejudice towards transsexual people. Even though, some parts of the society have started to accept homosexuality and transsexuality, there are still a large set of the population opposing it. Hate speech targeting LGBTQ+ individuals, known as homophobia/transphobia speech, has become a growing concern. This has led to a toxic and unwelcoming environment for LGBTQ+ people on online platforms. This poses a significant societal issue, hindering the progress of equality, diversity, and inclusion. The identification of homophobic and transphobic comments on social media platforms plays a crucial role in creating a safer environment for all social media users. In order to accomplish this, we built a machine learning model using SGD and SVM classifier. Our approach yielded promising results, with a weighted F1-score of 0.95 on the English dataset and we secured 4th rank in this task.