Question: Were the vast majority of offensive tweets authored by males?
Evidence: Given the annotated tweets, we wanted to ascertain the distribution of: types of offensive language, genres where it is used, the dialects used, and the gender of users using such language.
Figure FIGREF13 shows the distribution of topics associated with offensive tweets. As the figure shows, sports and politics are most dominant for offensive language including vulgar and hate speech. As for dialect, we looked at MSA and four major dialects, namely Egyptian (EGY), Leventine (LEV), Maghrebi (MGR), and Gulf (GLF). Figure FIGREF14 shows that 71% of vulgar tweets were written in EGY followed by GLF, which accounted for 13% of vulgar tweets. MSA was not used in any of the vulgar tweets. As for offensive tweets in general, EGY and GLF were used in 36% and 35% of the offensive tweets respectively. Unlike the case of vulgar language where MSA was non-existent, 15% of the offensive tweets were in fact written in MSA. For hate speech, GLF and EGY were again dominant and MSA consistuted 21% of the tweets. This is consistent with findings for other languages such as English and Italian where vulgar language was more frequently associated with colloquial language BIBREF24, BIBREF25. Regarding the gender, Figure FIGREF15 shows that the vast majority of offensive tweets, including vulgar and hate speech, were authored by males. Female Twitter users accounted for 14% of offensive tweets in general and 6% and 9% of vulgar and hate speech respectively. Figure FIGREF16 shows a detailed categorization of hate speech types, where the top three include insulting groups based on their political ideology, origin, and sport affiliation. Religious hate speech appeared in only 15% of all hate speech tweets.
Next, we analyzed all tweets labeled as offensive to better understand how Arabic speakers use offensive language. Here is a breakdown of usage:
Direct name calling: The most frequent attack is to call a person an animal name, and the most used animals were كلب> (“klb” – “dog”), حمار> (“HmAr” – “donkey”), and بهيم> (“bhym” – “beast”). The second most common was insulting mental abilities using words such as غبي> (“gby” – “stupid”) and عبيط> (“EbyT” –“idiot”). Some culture-specific differences should be considered. Not all animal names are used as insults. For example, animals such as أسد> (“Asd” – “lion”), صقر> (“Sqr” – “falcon”), and غزال> (“gzAl” – “gazelle”) are typically used for praise. For other insults, people use: some bird names such as دجاجة> (“djAjp” – “chicken”), بومة> (“bwmp” – “owl”), and غراب> (“grAb” – “crow”); insects such as ذبابة> (“*bAbp” – “fly”), صرصور> (“SrSwr” – “cockroach”), and حشرة> (“H$rp” – “insect”); microorganisms such as جرثومة> (“jrvwmp” – “microbe”) and طحالب> (“THAlb” – “algae”); inanimate objects such as جزمة> (“jzmp” – “shoes”) and سطل> (“sTl” – “bucket”) among other usages.
Simile and metaphor: Users use simile and metaphor were they would compare a person to: an animal as in زي الثور> (“zy Alvwr” – “like a bull”), سمعني نهيقك> (“smEny nhyqk” – “let me hear your braying”), and هز ديلك> (“hz dylk” – “wag your tail”); a person with mental or physical disability such as منغولي> (“mngwly” – “Mongolian (down-syndrome)”), معوق> (“mEwq” – “disabled”), and قزم> (“qzm” – “dwarf”); and to the opposite gender such as جيش نوال> (“jy$ nwAl” – “Nawal's army (Nawal is female name)”) and نادي زيزي> (“nAdy zyzy” – “Zizi's club (Zizi is a female pet name)”).
Indirect speech: This type of offensive language includes: sarcasm such as أذكى إخواتك> (“A*kY AxwAtk” – “smartest one of your siblings”) and فيلسوف الحمير> (“fylswf AlHmyr” – “the donkeys' philosopher”); questions such as ايه كل الغباء ده> (“Ayh kl AlgbA dh” – “what is all this stupidity”); and indirect speech such as النقاش مع البهايم غير مثمر> (“AlnqA$ mE AlbhAym gyr mvmr” – “no use talking to cattle”).
Wishing Evil: This entails wishing death or major harm to befall someone such as ربنا ياخدك> (“rbnA yAxdk” – “May God take (kill) you”), الله يلعنك> (“Allh ylEnk” – “may Allah/God curse you”), and روح في داهية> (“rwH fy dAhyp” – equivalent to “go to hell”).
Name alteration: One common way to insult others is to change a letter or two in their names to produce new offensive words that rhyme with the original names. Some examples of such include changing الجزيرة> (“Aljzyrp” – “Aljazeera (channel)”) to الخنزيرة> (“Alxnzyrp” – “the pig”) and خلفان> (“xlfAn” – “Khalfan (person name)”) to خرفان> (“xrfAn” – “crazed”).
Societal stratification: Some insults are associated with: certain jobs such as بواب> (“bwAb” – “doorman”) or خادم> (“xAdm” – “servant”); and specific societal components such بدوي> (“bdwy” – “bedouin”) and فلاح> (“flAH” – “farmer”).
Immoral behavior: These insults are associated with negative moral traits or behaviors such as حقير> (“Hqyr” – “vile”), خاين> (“xAyn” – “traitor”), and منافق> (“mnAfq” – “hypocrite”).
Sexually related: They include expressions such as خول> (“xwl” – “gay”), وسخة> (“wsxp” – “prostitute”), and عرص> (“ErS” – “pimp”).
Figure FIGREF17 shows top words with the highest valance score for individual words in the offensive tweets. Larger fonts are used to highlight words with highest score and align as well with the categories mentioned ahead in the breakdown for the offensive languages. We modified the valence score described by BIBREF1 conover2011political to magnify its value based on frequency of occurrence. The score is computed as follows:
$V(I) = 2 \frac{ \frac{tf(I, C_off)}{total(C_off)}}{\frac{tf(I, C_off)}{total(C_off)} + \frac{tf(I, C_cln)}{total(C_cln)} } - 1$
where
$tf(I, C_i) = \sum _{a \in I \bigcap C_i} [ln(Cnt(a, C_i)) + 1]$
$total(C_i) = \sum _{I} tf(I, C_i)$
$Cnt(a, C_i)$ is the number of times word $a$ was used in offensive or clean tweets tweets $C_i$. In essence, we are replacing term frequencies with the natural log of the term frequencies.
Figure 3 shows that the vast majority of offensive tweets, including vulgar and hate speech, were authored by males.
Answer: Yes, they were.