(Image source from: Iitr.ac.in)

Alumnus Richi Nayak and her colleague Mohammad Abdul Bashar developed an algorithm that detects the intent behind the social media posts.

Richi Nayak who is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Roorkee, and is currently a computer science professor at the Queensland University of Technology, Australia has developed an algorithm that identifies and reports social media posts spreading hatred on women.

Richi Nayak is a machine learning expert and her colleague, Mohammad Abdul Bashar met to design an algorithm that understands the content, context and the intention behind the social media posts.

The COVID-19 lockdown has witnessed a surge in incidents related to online harrassment and domestic violence against women as people are spending their time mostly on internet.

According to a web foundation survey, 52 percent of the young women and girls have experienced online abuse including threatening messages, sexual harrassment and sharing of private images with any consent from the women.

Richi, who is fond of machine learning and with her expertise in the field tried to solve a social issue that is targeting women to make social media a safer platform.

She did her major research on datasets like Wikipedia and used the user review data to subsequently detect the abusive launguage. Her research also included large dataset of tweets. She and her colleague then developed an algorithm and taught it to distinguish between misogynistic and non-misogynistic tweets.

The research and the algorithm is unique in itself as it takes a shift from the users reporting abusive messages and tweets to automatically detecting and reporting abusive content on social media platforms.

The research by Richika and the team demonstrates the use of STEM knowledge to address societal issues and her work towards making lives brighter for women and girls.

This technology developed by the IIT alumnus can be used to automatically stop the harassment of women on social media.

Richi Nayak is aspirational to take up a career in the field to detect and eliminate social issues and harrasment and abuse against women in India.

- By Gayatri Yellayi