{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,8]],"date-time":"2026-04-08T16:32:24Z","timestamp":1775665944413,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":48,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"8","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2024,7,30]],"date-time":"2024-07-30T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1722297600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Information"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Nowadays, technology allows people to connect and communicate with each other even from miles away, no matter the distance. With the increased use of social networks that were rapidly adopted in human beings\u2019 lives, they can chat and share different media files. While the intent for which they have been created may be positive, they can be abused and utilized in a negative way. One form in which they can be maliciously used is represented by cyberbullying. This is a form of bullying where an aggressor shares, posts, or sends false, harmful, or negative content about someone else by electronic means. In this paper, we propose a solution for bullying detection in GIFs. We employ a hybrid architecture that comprises a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and three Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs). For the feature extractor, we used the DenseNet-121 model that was pre-trained on the ImageNet-1k dataset. The obtained results give an accuracy of 99%.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/info15080446","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2024,7,30]],"date-time":"2024-07-30T11:11:25Z","timestamp":1722337885000},"page":"446","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":1,"title":["Bullying Detection Solution for GIFs Using a Deep Learning Approach"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"15","author":[{"given":"Razvan","family":"Stoleriu","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Computer Science and Engineering Department, National University of Science and Technology Politehnica Bucharest, 060042 Bucharest, Romania"}]},{"given":"Andrei","family":"Nascu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Informatics, University of Craiova, 200585 Craiova, Romania"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0007-3045-0239","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Ana Magdalena","family":"Anghel","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Computer Science and Engineering Department, National University of Science and Technology Politehnica Bucharest, 060042 Bucharest, Romania"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-4566-1545","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Florin","family":"Pop","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Computer Science and Engineering Department, National University of Science and Technology Politehnica Bucharest, 060042 Bucharest, Romania"},{"name":"National Institute for Research and Development in Informatics\u2014ICI Bucharest, Digital Transformation and Governance Department, 011455 Bucharest, Romania"},{"name":"Academy of Romanian Scientists, 050044 Bucharest, Romania"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2024,7,30]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"383","DOI":"10.1177\/0143034309106948","article-title":"Sticks and stones can break my bones, but how can pixels hurt me? Students\u2019 experiences with cyber-bullying","volume":"30","author":"Cassidy","year":"2009","journal-title":"Sch. Psychol. Int."},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"522","DOI":"10.1007\/s10964-007-9262-7","article-title":"Adolescents online: The importance of Internet activity choices to salient relationships","volume":"37","author":"Blais","year":"2008","journal-title":"J. Youth Adolesc."},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"429","DOI":"10.1037\/0012-1649.42.3.429","article-title":"Does home internet use influence the academic performance of low-income children?","volume":"42","author":"Jackson","year":"2006","journal-title":"Dev. Psychol."},{"key":"ref_4","first-page":"225","article-title":"A Systematic Review of the Event-Driven Activities in Social Applications","volume":"4","author":"Mostfa","year":"2023","journal-title":"SVU-Int. J. Eng. Sci. Appl."},{"key":"ref_5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1777","DOI":"10.1016\/j.chb.2005.10.005","article-title":"New bottle but old wine: A research of cyberbullying in schools","volume":"23","author":"Li","year":"2007","journal-title":"Comput. Hum. Behav."},{"key":"ref_6","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"265","DOI":"10.2190\/8YQM-B04H-PG4D-BLLH","article-title":"Cyber-harassment: A study of a new method for an old behavior","volume":"32","author":"Beran","year":"2005","journal-title":"J. Educ. Comput. Res."},{"key":"ref_7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"217","DOI":"10.1089\/cpb.2007.0008","article-title":"Cyberbullying: Youngsters\u2019 experiences and parental perception","volume":"11","author":"Dehue","year":"2008","journal-title":"CyberPsychol. Behav."},{"key":"ref_8","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"189","DOI":"10.1016\/j.jadohealth.2007.03.005","article-title":"Prevalence and frequency of Internet harassment instigation: Implications for adolescent health","volume":"41","author":"Ybarra","year":"2007","journal-title":"J. Adolesc. Health"},{"key":"ref_9","unstructured":"Blais, J., and Craig, W. (2008). Chatting, Befriending, and Bullying: Adolescent Internet Experiences and Associated Psychosocial Outcomes. [Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Psychology, Queen\u2019s University]."},{"key":"ref_10","unstructured":"Vogels, E.A. (2022). Teens and Cyberbullying 2022, Pew Research Center."},{"key":"ref_11","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Alhujailli, A., Karwowski, W., Wan, T.T., and Hancock, P. (2020). Affective and stress consequences of cyberbullying. Symmetry, 12.","DOI":"10.3390\/sym12091536"},{"key":"ref_12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"3","DOI":"10.4103\/psychiatry.IndianJPsychiatry_147_18","article-title":"Cyberbullying: A virtual offense with real consequences","volume":"60","author":"Rao","year":"2018","journal-title":"Indian J. Psychiatry"},{"key":"ref_13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1145\/2362394.2362400","article-title":"Common sense reasoning for detection, prevention, and mitigation of cyberbullying","volume":"2","author":"Dinakar","year":"2012","journal-title":"ACM Trans. Interact. Intell. Syst. (TiiS)"},{"key":"ref_14","first-page":"136","article-title":"Cyberbullying: Perceptions, Effects and Behaviours among teenagers","volume":"8","author":"Hashmi","year":"2020","journal-title":"J. Strategy Perform. Manag."},{"key":"ref_15","first-page":"120","article-title":"Types of cyberbullying","volume":"1","author":"Scheithauer","year":"2021","journal-title":"Wiley Blackwell Handb. Bullying Compr. Int. Rev. Res. Interv."},{"key":"ref_16","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Bauman, S. (2015). Types of cyberbullying. Cyberbullying: What Counselors Need to Know, John Wiley & Sons.","DOI":"10.1002\/9781119221685"},{"key":"ref_17","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"856","DOI":"10.1080\/13676261.2018.1546838","article-title":"\u2018Nobody wants the parents involved\u2019: Social norms in parent and adolescent responses to cyberbullying","volume":"22","author":"Young","year":"2019","journal-title":"J. Youth Stud."},{"key":"ref_18","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"376","DOI":"10.1111\/j.1469-7610.2007.01846.x","article-title":"Cyberbullying: Its nature and impact in secondary school pupils","volume":"49","author":"Smith","year":"2008","journal-title":"J. Child Psychol. Psychiatry"},{"key":"ref_19","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"10","DOI":"10.1016\/j.jadohealth.2015.04.011","article-title":"Cyberbullying: Review of an old problem gone viral","volume":"57","author":"Aboujaoude","year":"2015","journal-title":"J. Adolesc. Health"},{"key":"ref_20","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Zhu, C., Huang, S., Evans, R., and Zhang, W. (2021). Cyberbullying among adolescents and children: A comprehensive review of the global situation, risk factors, and preventive measures. Front. Public Health, 9.","DOI":"10.3389\/fpubh.2021.634909"},{"key":"ref_21","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1018","DOI":"10.1177\/15248380231171185","article-title":"Does the COVID-19 pandemic increase or decrease the global cyberbullying behaviors? A systematic review and meta-analysis","volume":"25","author":"Huang","year":"2024","journal-title":"Trauma Violence Abus."},{"key":"ref_22","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Hinduja, S., and Patchin, J.W. (2012). School Climate 2.0: Preventing Cyberbullying and Sexting One Classroom at a Time, Corwin Press.","DOI":"10.4135\/9781506335438"},{"key":"ref_23","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"277","DOI":"10.1016\/j.chb.2009.11.014","article-title":"Following you home from school: A critical review and synthesis of research on cyberbullying victimization","volume":"26","author":"Tokunaga","year":"2010","journal-title":"Comput. Hum. Behav."},{"key":"ref_24","unstructured":"Dadvar, M., Trieschnigg, D., Ordelman, R., and De Jong, F. (2013, January 24\u201327). Improving cyberbullying detection with user context. Proceedings of the Advances in Information Retrieval: 35th European Conference on IR Research, ECIR 2013, Moscow, Russia. Proceedings 35."},{"key":"ref_25","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Fati, S.M., Muneer, A., Alwadain, A., and Balogun, A.O. (2023). Cyberbullying detection on twitter using deep learning-based attention mechanisms and continuous Bag of words feature extraction. Mathematics, 11.","DOI":"10.3390\/math11163567"},{"key":"ref_26","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Pater, J.A., Miller, A.D., and Mynatt, E.D. (2015, January 18\u201323). This digital life: A neighborhood-based study of adolescents\u2019 lives online. Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Seoul, Republic of Korea.","DOI":"10.1145\/2702123.2702534"},{"key":"ref_27","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"282","DOI":"10.1109\/76.911156","article-title":"Streaming video over the Internet: Approaches and directions","volume":"11","author":"Wu","year":"2001","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. Video Technol."},{"key":"ref_28","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"37","DOI":"10.5817\/CP2014-4-6","article-title":"Bullying on the pixel playground: Investigating risk factors of cyberbullying at the intersection of children\u2019s online-offline social lives","volume":"8","author":"Seiler","year":"2014","journal-title":"Cyberpsychol. J. Psychosoc. Res. Cyberspace"},{"key":"ref_29","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Singh, V.K., Radford, M.L., Huang, Q., and Furrer, S. (March, January 25). \u201cThey basically like destroyed the school one day\u201d On Newer App Features and Cyberbullying in Schools. Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, Portland, OR, USA.","DOI":"10.1145\/2998181.2998279"},{"key":"ref_30","first-page":"1","article-title":"Cyber-aggression, cyberbullying, and cyber-grooming: A survey and research challenges","volume":"54","year":"2021","journal-title":"ACM Comput. Surv. (CSUR)"},{"key":"ref_31","first-page":"41","article-title":"Alt_Right White Lite: Trolling, hate speech and cyber racism on social media","volume":"9","author":"Jakubowicz","year":"2017","journal-title":"Cosmop. Civ. Soc. Interdiscip. J."},{"key":"ref_32","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"241","DOI":"10.1109\/ICMLA.2011.152","article-title":"Using machine learning to detect cyberbullying","volume":"Volume 2","author":"Reynolds","year":"2011","journal-title":"Proceedings of the 2011 10th International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications and Workshops"},{"key":"ref_33","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Siddhartha, K., Kumar, K.R., Varma, K.J., Amogh, M., and Samson, M. (2022, January 26\u201328). Cyber Bullying Detection Using Machine Learning. Proceedings of the 2022 2nd Asian Conference on Innovation in Technology (ASIANCON), Ravet, India.","DOI":"10.1109\/ASIANCON55314.2022.9909201"},{"key":"ref_34","unstructured":"Dadvar, M., de Jong, F.M., Ordelman, R., and Trieschnigg, D. (2012, January 24). Improved cyberbullying detection using gender information. Proceedings of the Proceedings of the Twelfth Dutch-Belgian Information Retrieval Workshop (DIR 2012), Ghent, Belgium."},{"key":"ref_35","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Jain, V., Saxena, A.K., Senthil, A., Jain, A., and Jain, A. (2021, January 10\u201311). Cyber-bullying detection in social media platform using machine learning. Proceedings of the 2021 10th International Conference on System Modeling & Advancement in Research Trends (SMART), Moradabad, India.","DOI":"10.1109\/SMART52563.2021.9676194"},{"key":"ref_36","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Singla, S., Lal, R., Sharma, K., Solanki, A., and Kumar, J. (2023, January 3\u20135). Machine learning techniques to detect cyber-bullying. Proceedings of the 2023 5th International Conference on Inventive Research in Computing Applications (ICIRCA), Coimbatore, India.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICIRCA57980.2023.10220908"},{"key":"ref_37","first-page":"703","article-title":"Social media cyberbullying detection using machine learning","volume":"10","author":"Hani","year":"2019","journal-title":"Int. J. Adv. Comput. Sci. Appl."},{"key":"ref_38","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"605","DOI":"10.1016\/j.procs.2021.01.207","article-title":"Accurate cyberbullying detection and prevention on social media","volume":"181","author":"Perera","year":"2021","journal-title":"Procedia Comput. Sci."},{"key":"ref_39","unstructured":"Vishwamitra, N., Hu, H., Luo, F., and Cheng, L. (2020, January 14\u201317). Towards understanding and detecting cyberbullying in real-world images. Proceedings of the 2020 19th IEEE international conference on machine learning and applications (ICMLA), Virtual Event."},{"key":"ref_40","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Maity, K., Jha, P., Saha, S., and Bhattacharyya, P. (2022, January 11\u201315). A multitask framework for sentiment, emotion and sarcasm aware cyberbullying detection from multi-modal code-mixed memes. Proceedings of the 45th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, Madrid, Spain.","DOI":"10.1145\/3477495.3531925"},{"key":"ref_41","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Singh, V.K., Ghosh, S., and Jose, C. (2017, January 6\u201311). Toward multimodal cyberbullying detection. Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Denver, CO, USA.","DOI":"10.1145\/3027063.3053169"},{"key":"ref_42","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"11059","DOI":"10.1007\/s00500-019-04550-x","article-title":"Towards Cyberbullying-free social media in smart cities: A unified multi-modal approach","volume":"24","author":"Kumari","year":"2020","journal-title":"Soft Comput."},{"key":"ref_43","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Luo, Y., Zhang, X., Hua, J., and Shen, W. (, January 17\u201321). Multi-featured cyberbullying detection based on deep learning. Proceedings of the 2021 16th International Conference on Computer Science & Education (ICCSE), Lancaster, UK.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICCSE51940.2021.9569270"},{"key":"ref_44","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"187","DOI":"10.1016\/j.future.2021.01.014","article-title":"Multi-modal aggression identification using convolutional neural network and binary particle swarm optimization","volume":"118","author":"Kumari","year":"2021","journal-title":"Future Gener. Comput. Syst."},{"key":"ref_45","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Do, P., Pham, P., and Phan, T. (2020). Some research issues of harmful and violent content filtering for social networks in the context of large-scale and streaming data with Apache Spark. Recent Advances in Security, Privacy, and Trust for Internet of Things (IoT) and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), Chapman and Hall.","DOI":"10.1201\/9780429270567-11"},{"key":"ref_46","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"16283","DOI":"10.1109\/ACCESS.2022.3147519","article-title":"A deep learning-based approach for inappropriate content detection and classification of youtube videos","volume":"10","author":"Yousaf","year":"2022","journal-title":"IEEE Access"},{"key":"ref_47","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Vishal, Y., Bhaskar, J.U., Yaswanthreddy, R., Vyshnavi, C., and Shanti, S. (2024, January 5\u20137). A Novel Approach for Inappropriate Content Detection and Classification of Youtube Videos using Deep Learning. Proceedings of the 2024 3rd International Conference on Applied Artificial Intelligence and Computing (ICAAIC), Salem, India.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICAAIC60222.2024.10574927"},{"key":"ref_48","first-page":"239","article-title":"Continual Learning on Facial Recognition Using Convolutional Neural Networks","volume":"85","author":"Feng","year":"2023","journal-title":"U.P.B. Sci. Bull. Ser. C"}],"container-title":["Information"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2078-2489\/15\/8\/446\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,10]],"date-time":"2025-10-10T15:26:19Z","timestamp":1760109979000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2078-2489\/15\/8\/446"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2024,7,30]]},"references-count":48,"journal-issue":{"issue":"8","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2024,8]]}},"alternative-id":["info15080446"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/info15080446","relation":{},"ISSN":["2078-2489"],"issn-type":[{"value":"2078-2489","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2024,7,30]]}}}