E-Community Health and Toxicity

Online communities abound today, arising on social networking sites, on the websites of real-world communities like schools or clubs, on web discussion forums, on the discussion boards of videogames, and even on the comment pages of news sites and blogs. Some of these communities are “healthy” and foster polite discussion between respectful members, but others are “toxic” and devolve into virulent fights, trolling, cyber-bullying, fraud, or worse even, incitation to suicide, radicalization, or the sexual predation and grooming of minors. Detecting toxic messages and toxic users is a major challenge, in part because they are adversarial users who are actively trying to circumvent or fool detection software and filters.

Faculty Supervisor:

Sehl Mellouli, Richard Khoury, Fred Popowich, Luc Lamontagne, Mario Marchand

Student:

Khalil Ben Fadhel, Hana Ajakan, Eloi Brassard-Gourdeau, Fariha Naz, Robin Joganah, Dominique Loyer, Roxane Debruyker, Prudencio Tossou, Jonathan Gingras, Zeineb Trabelsi, Talia Sanchez Viera, Jian Mo, LYDIA ODILINYE

Partner:

Two Hat Security Research Corp.

Discipline:

Computer science

Sector:

Media and communications

University:

Program:

Accelerate