Suicidal Ideation Detection in Incel Forums
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Authors
Van Herk, Henry
Date
Type
thesis
Language
eng
Keyword
dark web forums , incel characteristics , suicide detection , natural language analytics
Alternative Title
Abstract
Online communities allow like-minded individuals from across the globe to connect effortlessly. Many communities enforce guidelines to ensure safe user experiences, while others, such as the incel community, allow free speech and promote having no censorship. While many discussions in incel forums deal with their shared hate for women, there are numerous posts about individuals’ suicidal thoughts and plans. On top of suicide being a severe public health problem, the emergence of lone wolf terrorist attacks perpetrated by individuals with incel ideologies makes incel forums an important online channel to monitor. Analyzing online posts in these forums dealing with suicidal ideation can help identify individuals who may be likely to die by suicide or carry out such an attack, which can be helpful to organizations that wish to prevent suicide attempts and possible lone-wolf terrorism. While suicidal ideation detection in online user content is a well-researched problem, not much research involves incel forums. My work involves research in suicidal ideology, incel terminology, and existing suicidal ideation detection methods outside of incel forums. Multiple classical supervised learners, as well as deep learners, were trained on an incel forum gathered from the dark web. The resulting best-performing suicide intent detection model achieved an F1 score of 97.5%. Once calculated, these predictions could prioritize posts and their authors for investigation.
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License
Queen's University's Thesis/Dissertation Non-Exclusive License for Deposit to QSpace and Library and Archives Canada
ProQuest PhD and Master's Theses International Dissemination Agreement
Intellectual Property Guidelines at Queen's University
Copying and Preserving Your Thesis
This publication is made available by the authority of the copyright owner solely for the purpose of private study and research and may not be copied or reproduced except as permitted by the copyright laws without written authority from the copyright owner.
Attribution 3.0 United States
ProQuest PhD and Master's Theses International Dissemination Agreement
Intellectual Property Guidelines at Queen's University
Copying and Preserving Your Thesis
This publication is made available by the authority of the copyright owner solely for the purpose of private study and research and may not be copied or reproduced except as permitted by the copyright laws without written authority from the copyright owner.
Attribution 3.0 United States