CSECU-DSG at SemEval-2021 Task 6: Orchestrating Multimodal Neural Architectures for Identifying Persuasion Techniques in Texts and Images

AbstractInscribing persuasion techniques in memes is the most impactful way to influence peoples’ mindsets. People are more inclined to memes as they are more stimulating and convincing and hence memes are often exploited by tactfully engraving propaganda in its context with the intent of attaining specific agenda. This paper describes our participation in the three subtasks featured by SemEval 2021 task 6 on the detection of persuasion techniques in texts and images. We utilize a fusion of logistic regression, decision tree, and fine-tuned DistilBERT for tackling subtask 1. As for subtask 2, we propose a system that consolidates a span identification model and a multi-label classification model based on pre-trained BERT. We address the multi-modal multi-label classification of memes defined in subtask 3 by utilizing a ResNet50 based image model, DistilBERT based text model, and a multi-modal architecture based on multikernel CNN+LSTM and MLP model. The outcomes illustrated the competitive performance of our systems.