SoulQrat/russian_memes

Russian Meme Dataset

This dataset contains annotated Russian-language image memes. It is designed for evaluating multimodal and text-based models on meme understanding, with a focus on toxicity, sarcasm, irony, and local cultural references.

The dataset is released in two CSV versions:

• dataset_basic.csv — a compact annotation table with image filenames and target labels.
• dataset_extended.csv — an extended table that also includes OCR text, visual scene descriptions, and cultural-reference comments.

Files

dataset_basic.csv

This version is intended for standard classification experiments.

Column	Type	Description
filename	string	Image filename, for example img_0000.jpg.
toxic_label	int, 0/1	Whether the meme contains content that should be treated as toxic or policy-violating.
culture_label	int, 0/1	Whether the meme contains a Russian cultural reference, local meme format, or context-specific reference.
sarcasm_label	int, 0/1	Whether the meme contains sarcasm.
irony_label	int, 0/1	Whether the meme contains irony or post-ironic humor.

dataset_extended.csv

This version is intended for text-only experiments, error analysis, and interpretability studies.

Column	Type	Description
filename	string	Image filename, for example img_0000.jpg.
ocr	string	Text recognized directly from the meme image.
scene_description	string	Short textual description of the visual scene or objects in the meme.
toxic_label	int, 0/1	Whether the meme contains content that should be treated as toxic or policy-violating.
culture_label	int, 0/1	Whether the meme contains a Russian cultural reference, local meme format, or context-specific reference.
culture_comment	string	Explanation of the cultural reference, filled when culture_label = 1.
sarcasm_label	int, 0/1	Whether the meme contains sarcasm.
irony_label	int, 0/1	Whether the meme contains irony or post-ironic humor.
problem_type	int, 0–3	Type of potentially difficult humor pattern.

Label definitions

Toxicity

toxic_label is assigned independently of the humor type.

• 1: the meme contains or promotes policy-violating content, such as hate speech, harassment, dangerous content, graphic violence, extremist support, illegal goods, sexual content, self-harm encouragement, or other harmful categories.
• 0: the meme does not fall into these categories. Non-toxic cases may still contain self-directed humor, absurd humor, political or historical satire without hate or harassment, profanity without a harmful target, or harmless wordplay.

A meme can be labeled as toxic even when the harmful content is presented as a joke, irony, dark humor, or absurdity.

Cultural reference

culture_label indicates whether the meme requires knowledge of Russian cultural context, local internet memes, social references, linguistic codes, or culturally specific background knowledge.

If culture_label = 1, the extended version provides culture_comment, which explains the reference.

Humor type

The humor labels describe the dominant rhetorical form of the meme.

• sarcasm_label = 1: the meme uses sharp, biting, or mocking sarcasm.
• irony_label = 1: the meme uses irony, post-irony, absurd contrast, or deliberate mismatch between literal and intended meaning.

The technical helper label other_label is not included in the released files. In the original annotation table, it was used only to ensure that sarcasm, irony, and other humor forms were mutually exclusive.

Difficult humor pattern

problem_type marks meme types that may be especially difficult for automated models. It is not a toxicity label.

Value	Meaning	Description
0	None	The meme does not belong to one of the difficult humor categories below.
1	Self-directed or depressive humor	The meme jokes about the author, personal failure, appearance, mental state, or similar self-directed topics.
2	Non-targeted aggression	The meme contains profanity, aggression, or insults aimed at an abstract situation, object, or general frustration rather than a specific person or protected group.
3	Absurd or chaotic humor	The meme mentions strange, frightening, or formally problematic things, but the surrounding absurdity makes the unrealistic and comic framing clear.