NSF Financing System to Automatically Detect Cyberbullying
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is financing the creation of a system for the “automatic detection” of cyberbullying. The goal of the project is to create “better cyberbullying detectors.” It hopes to employ “social intervention mechanisms” to prevent cyberbullying. Data on cyberbullying will also “be made available to the larger research community.”
The project was awarded to Rutgers University, and the real-time, automatic detection of hurtful online speech is necessary, according to the NSF grant, because cyberbullying is a “critical social problem.” The grant said 40 percent of American teenagers have reported being cyberbullied. The project will involve searching for keywords and studying the relationships between teenagers who send and receive mean online messages.