apologies for cross-posting
We are pleased to announce the *GermEval Shared Task on Candy Speech Detection
(„Flausch-Erkennung“)*
This is the first call to participate in the shared task on candy speech
detection („Flausch-Erkennung“).
We invite everyone from academia and industry to participate in the shared task.
The workshop discussing the results of this shared task is planned to be held
in conjunction with the Conference on Natural Language Processing (KONVENS) in
September 2025.
*Introduction*
Numerous methods have been developed for detecting and censoring negative
speech (e.g., hate speech or offensive or harmful language) on social media
platforms. However, there is much less focus on identifying and promoting
positive supportive discourse in online communities. Our shared task aims to
address this gap and encourage researchers to focus on such positive
expressions.
The task is to identify expressions of candy speech (Flausch) in online posts
(YouTube comments). We define candy speech as an expression of positive
attitudes in social media toward individuals or their output (videos, comments,
etc.). The purpose of candy speech is to encourage, cheer up, support and
empower others. It can be viewed as the counterpart to hate speech, as it also
aims to influence the self-image of the target person or group, but in a
positive way.
*Data*
We will provide the participants with annotated training (and development) and
unlabeled test datasets containing complete written, German language comment
threads under YouTube videos posted by different content creators. The content
creators and communities vary in topic, style, age group, etc. The test data
and training data do not overlap wrt. to the original content creator of the
video – the communities commenting on the videos can therefore be expected to
differ.
*Task Details*
Candy speech detection is the task of identifying the presence of candy speech
(at the span level) in a given YouTube comment thread and classifying each
expression in one of the predefined categories. This shared task focuses on
German speaking YouTube communities. Participants will be provided with a
dataset of YouTube comments manually annotated for different types of candy
speech expressions.
We offer the following two subtasks. Participants in this year's shared task
may choose to participate in either subtask:
Subtask 1: Coarse-Grained Classification
The goal of this subtask is to identify whether the given comment contains
candy speech ("Flausch") or not. The dataset is manually annotated for the
presence of candy speech.
Subtask 2: Fine-Grained Classification
The goal of this subtask is to identify the span of each candy speech
expression in a given text and classify it in one of the predefined categories.
The dataset is manually annotated for 10 different types of candy speech
expressions, such as “positive feedback”, “compliment”, “group membership” etc.
More details on the subtasks (including examples) can be found at the website
of the shared task (see link below).
*Important dates*
Trial data available: February 15, 2025
Training data available: March 3, 2025
Test data available: May 17, 2025
Evaluation start: June 16, 2025
Evaluation end: June 27, 2025
Paper submission due: July 11, 2025
Camera ready due: August 15, 2025
GermEval workshop: September 8 or 12, 2025 (co-located with KONVENS)
*Website*
https://yuliacl.github.io/GermEval2025-Flausch-Erkennung/
*GermEval*
GermEval is a series of shared task evaluation campaigns that focus on Natural
Language Processing for the German language. GermEval has been conducted
regularly since 2014 in co-location with KONVENS/GSCL conferences:
https://germeval.github.io/tasks/
*contact email*
Please send any enquiry to the following email address:
[email protected]
Best regards,
Yulia Clausen, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany
Tatjana Scheffler, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany
Michael Wiegand, Universität Wien, Austria
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