Propasafe: A BERT-based offline tool for propaganda detection

Authors

Vivek Sharma, The Graduate Center, City University of New YorkFollow
Mohammad Mahdi Shokri, The Graduate Center, City University of New YorkFollow
Shweta Jain, CUNY John Jay CollegeFollow
Sarah Ita Levitan, CUNY Hunter CollegeFollow
Elena Filatova, CUNY New York City College of TechnologyFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Spring 5-2025

Abstract

In an era marked by the rapid consumption of digital news, the proliferation of propaganda poses significant threats to democratic values and informed decision-making. We propose a novel framework that prioritizes user privacy while assisting in the automatic detection of propaganda in news articles, allowing users to sift through the rhetoric to read the relevant objective news. As a demonstration of this framework, we present Propasafe, a BERT-based browser extension designed to alert users to propagandist tones in news articles. By highlighting instances of propaganda-like language in real-time, Propasafe empowers users to critically engage with news content, promoting objective understanding and informed readership. This tool aims to mitigate the influence of manipulative content while safeguarding user privacy.

Comments

This is the author's accepted manuscript of a paper published in WWW '25: Companion Proceedings of the ACM on Web Conference 2025 available at https://doi.org/10.1145/3701716.3715195