Funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU and within the PRIN 2022 PNRR, BullyBuster2 (BB2) involves four multidisciplinary research groups belonging to four universities in Southern Italy (University of Cagliari, University of Foggia, University of Naples Federico II, University of Bari Aldo Moro) to combine artificial intelligence, technology, law and psychology skills to develop a comprehensive framework capable of identifying and mitigating bullying behaviours. BB2 aims to advance bullying and cyberbullying detection capabilities by incorporating advanced models that consider a broad range of victim profiles, from children to adults. A further objective of the project is the creation of an interdisciplinary reference laboratory to combat the phenomenon of bullying and cyberbullying. This laboratory, in which expert technologists, jurists, psychologists, sociologists and economists participate, aims at greater diffusion and expansion of the research community in the field, including stakeholders such as institutions and companies and subjects potentially interested in the engineering of anti-bullying tools.
The pillars underneath the project are the following (Fig. 1): exploiting the computer vision and artificial intelligence potential to seek aggressive behavior in crowded environments (Fig. 2), for detecting digitally manipulated content such as audio and video deepfakes to attack the victims’ reputation by spreading fake news through chat-based apps (Fig. 3), to protect victims in front of unpleasant feelings when confronting with remote people and to discourage bullies from sending aggressive messages (Fig. 4). The project also aims to give public institutions such as schools and public order representatives the instruments to restrain this problem effectively (Fig. 5). The project is the follow-up of “BullyBuster – A framework for bullying and cyberbullying action detection by computer vision and artificial intelligence methods and algorithms”, which was awarded the insertion of the TOP 100 Global List of International Research Center for Artificial Intelligence under the auspices of UNESCO (https://ircai.org/top100/entry/bullybuster-a-framework-for-bullying-and-cyberbullying-action-detection-by-computer-vision-and-artificial-intelligence-methods-and-algorithms/).
With this aim, in this HCAI-EP Special Session, we will gather contributions from practitioners and researchers on (cyber)bullying detection. Interdisciplinary contributions from computer scientists, psychologists, and lawyers are invited on the topics above, including group-level behaviour identification, anomaly detection, affective computing, and text analytics. The paper style, conference deadlines, etc., are as per the main track.
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