Anti-cyberbully chatbot- Chatika

Cyberbullying has made online platforms an unsafe learning environment. According to the U Report Malaysia Voice Matter on June 3, 2019. Twenty-eight percent (28%) out of 6,795 young people in Malaysia polled that they have been a victim of online bullying. On a serious level, cyberbullying can lead to social anxiety, depression and even suicidal thoughts.

Thus we came up with the idea of an intelligent chatbot named Chatika that can recognize Malaysian cyberbullying words. Chatika has a function to filter and censor the filthy words, alert messages or notification when a user triggered the words and help educate and spread the awareness among the users by providing an interactive and deep simulation module in the chatbot. 

Chatika will help reduce cyberbullying activities and educate Malaysian to be respectful toward others in order to create a cybersafe environment nationally and globally.

The specific problem that we try to solve from The Challenge is the equitable and safe classroom which ensures the mental health of learners by mitigating possible cyberbullying using technological approaches.

In a survey on online bullying carried out by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General in 2019, it was found that 3 in 10 young Malaysians had been victims of cyberbullying that affected their education and social life. 

In serious cases the victims may consider to suicide as what has happened to a 20 years old Malaysian who hanged herself .She allegedly fell victim to cyberbullying after a video of her and her colleague drew criticism on Facebook and went viral.

Not all people are cautious that their act has pushed other people into being cyberbullied victims. Especially young people whose fingers work faster than their normal state of mind when they are angry, jealous , disgusted etc.

Anti-cyberbullying chatbot, Chatika provides a real-time e-learning experience to cultivate good cyber ethics among primary and secondary students focusing on preventing cyber bully behavior. Chatika is a web browser plug-in based solution that is easy and safe to improve good quality communication in a social media environment. Thus, could prevent users from committing and seeing cyber harassment, insult, filthy, hatred, and racism.

Chatika is able to detect the context of cyberbullying words and warn the user before submitting the text. Then, the text will be censored if it is being sent. The Chatika also has the features of providing stimulation to increase cyberbullying awareness.

The target population are Malaysian youngsters who’s always using social media as their main communication with each other. They are vulnerable towards harsh words which could have a negative effect on their vocabulary and also vulnerable to cyberbullying attacks which could affect their psychology and mental health.

We currently conduct several surveys in a selected group of primary and secondary students which are most likely to be exposed to the negative behavior. Based on the survey, we analyze the common words and sentences that could be used during a cyberbully case.

Based on the analysis, we came up with an intelligent chatbot as a solution to mitigate the use of bad words during their communication through social media and to increase their awareness regarding cyberbullying and also the ethical ways to use their social media. 

This chatbot alleviates these problems by filtering and censoring the inappropriate words when the youngsters are chatting with each other in social media. The chatbot also provides alert messages or notification when using unfitting words. This chatbot could perform a simulation to educate the Malaysian youth to conduct the proper ways when on online conversation and the awareness on cyberbullying.

The usage of internet and online platforms among students in Malaysia increases as they need to adapt to the online learning environment after the Covid-19 outbreak. There are significant changes in cyberbullying as they are now free to use their social media at all times. Thus, curbing cyberbullying through our intelligent chatbot seems to be an effective way to be adopted in the current situation in order to keep a safe and positive environment among the students and all Malaysian communities.

We are still researching, collecting dataset and information to prove our concept idea can be implemented in the future.

At the first year implementation of the project, we are targeting on a selected group of primary and secondary school students at three states with approximately 1000 schools to conduct a survey on cyberbullying awareness . Since Malaysia comprises 14 states, we are expecting to cover 5 states in the next coming year and gradually increase the respondents.

We are measuring our progress by observing the statistics of the cyber bullying cases throughout the year. So firstly, we conducted a survey on cyberbullying to get the current situation of cyberbullying and also the current state of awareness among Malaysian youth regarding these issues.
Next, we execute our program by promoting this plug in through our targeted secondary and primary school students. After three months or so, we gather responses by carrying a survey. Then, we analyze the gathered response and update the statistics.
The succeeding years also will do the same procedure to gather the response and get the statistics update. However, we may modify the procedure of collecting the progress and statistics based on the situation to improve the accuracy of the collected data. That's how we measure our progress to see how we achieve our goal.

Anti-cyberbullying chatbot, Chatika provides a real-time e-learning experience to cultivate good cyber ethics among primary and secondary students focusing on preventing cyber bully behavior. Chatika is a web browser plug-in based solution that is easy and safe to improve good quality communication in a social media environment. 

We would use the prize in developing this solution. As it is still in the concept phase. The funds given could be used to conduct data collection, survey activities, engagement with subject matter experts, Chatika development and deployment, and getting the feedback from the targeted user.

Chatika educates people on cyber ethics and encourages people to have good social communication which leads to a more secure and safe digital environment. According to statistics provided by Cybersecurity Malaysia on sexual harassment, majority victims are among women and girls. Due to this, we strongly believed Chatika would improve mental, emotional and psychological health. Chatika is suitable for those who have a low level of resilience against cyber harassment.

Thus, increase the level of resiliency against cyber harassment. Hence, this improves the quality of life for womankind. 

We would use the prize in developing this solution. As it is still in the concept phase. The funds given could be used to conduct data collection, survey activities, engagement with subject matter experts, Chatika development and deployment, and getting the feedback from the targeted user.

The ground truth of cyberbullying in Malaysia, according to observation conducted by Cybersecurity Malaysia is when, what, why, who and how it triggered the moment cyberbullying started. These would contribute to the operational requirement for Chatika.

Currently our solution-Chatika, will be developed on current chatbot technology which focuses on machine learning algorithms that will train a defined pattern of filthy, racism, insults, curse, harassments and hatred words and sentences.

However, we have identified the most crucial parts of the data operation by conducting a proper data acquisition (survey and text crawl) to reduce inaccurate results. Our focus on data preparation at this stage would be based on local language to develop Malay lexicon. One of the purposes in developing the Chatika is to reduce the racism among Malaysian communities and also give some sense of equality to people.

We would use the prize in developing this solution. As it is still in the concept phase. The funds given could be used to conduct data collection, survey activities, engagement with subject matter experts, Chatika development and deployment, and getting the feedback from the targeted user.

Chatbot allows the educator to reduce time allocated for answering students' frequent ask questions and give an immediate answer. Aligning with this, Chatika which is a chatbot plug-in could be used to educate students by providing an interactive simulation on cyberbullying awareness and cyber ethics.

Currently, Chatika will develop chatbot technology which focuses on machine learning algorithms that will train a defined pattern of filthy, insults, curse, racism, harassments and hatred words and sentences.

However, we have identified the most crucial parts of the data operation by conducting a proper data acquisition (survey and text crawl) to reduce inaccurate results. Our focus on data preparation at this stage would be based on local language to develop Malay lexicon.

We would use the prize in developing this solution. As it is still in the concept phase. The funds given could be used to conduct data collection, survey activities, engagement with subject matter experts, Chatika development and deployment, and getting the feedback from the targeted user.