Project Description

The AMiCA (“Automatic Monitoring for Cyberspace Applications”) project aims to mine relevant social media (blogs, chat rooms, and social networking sites) and collect, analyse, and integrate large amounts of information using text and image analysis. The ultimate goal is to trace harmful content, contact, or conduct in an automatic way. Essentially, we take a cross-media mining approach that allows us to detect risks “on-the-fly”. When critical situations are detected (e.g. a very violent communication), alerts can be issued to moderators of the social networking sites. When used on aggregated data, the same technology can be used for incident collection and monitoring at the scale of individual social networking sites. In addition, the technology can provide accurate quantitative data to support providers, science, and government in decision-making processes with respect to child safety online.

Period: 01/01/2013 - 31/12/2016

Sponsor: IWT - Agentschap voor Innovatie door Wetenschap en Technologie (Agency for Innovation by Science and Technology)

Project Summary

Nederlands

In het AMiCA project willen we mogelijk bedreigende situaties op sociale netwerken automatisch herkennen door middel van tekst- en beeldanalyse. Ons doel omvat onder meer het waarborgen van de online veiligheid van kinderen. Drie kritieke situaties staan centraal in het onderzoek: 1) cyberpesten, 2) seksueel overschrijdend gedrag, en 3) depressie en zelfmoordneiging.

Voor meer informatie, neem contact op met de projectcoördinator: walter.daelemans@uantwerpen.be

English

In the AMiCA project, we identify possibly threatening situations on social networks by means of text and image analysis. Our goal includes ensuring the online safety of children. There are three critical situations at the centre of our research: 1) cyberbullying, 2) sexually transgressive behavior, and 3) depression and suicidal behavior.

For more information, please contact the project coordinator: walter.daelemans@uantwerpen.be