Project name: Bully Buster 2 – The ongoing fight against bullying and cyberbullying with the help of artificial intelligence forthe human wellbeing
Funding institution: MIUR
Program on which it is funded: PRIN2022 PNRR
https://prin.unica.it/bullybuster2/
Description: This project is the follow up of the one titled “BullyBuster – A framework for bullying and cyberbullying actiondetection by computer vision and artificial intelligence methods and algorithms” (BB), accepted for funding in2017. BB was the first project where four interdisciplinary research units of southern universities joined theirefforts to provide bullying and cyberbullying detection algorithms by adopting artificial intelligenceapproaches. The technological solutions were inspired by psychological models and also the crucial aspectsto be overcome from the legal viewpoint were focused on. Software tools as a proof-of-concept wereprovided, under the name of “BullyBuster”, for public institutions such as schools and police forces, as wellas the potential and young victims: the key-words “prevention” and “repression” were the guidelines. BBexpected closure is on febr. 2023: at that time the demo version of a desktop application including behavioraldetection systems by video-surveillance cameras, deepfake detection for verifying multimedia contentsdisseminated in social networks and chatlines, text analytics tools and keystroke dynamics detectionalgorithms to evaluate the possible victim’s emotional state will be integrated. The BB research group gaineda great experience and the preliminary results allowed this project to be selected for inclusion in the “MakerFarie European Edition 10th Anniversary Book”, for example. This success encouraged us to proposeBullyBuster 2 (BB2), with two specific innovative goals: the first one is to extend the models and methodsalready developed to also include other typologies of victims, adults especially. As acknowledged by theItalian Ministry of Health, (cyber)bullying is a real threat to human wellbeing. Acting against this phenomenonrequires reducing the risk of people being exposed as (cyber)victims. Furthermore, several recent anddramatic events pointed out that bullying and cyberbullying is not only matter for teenagers; it amplified itsfocus, being recurrent and often carried out even among ager people. This implies the adaptation of the BB’smethods and algorithms to novel psychological models and behaviors. The second goal of BB2 is toempower the dissemination efforts and create the first (inter)national research group, namely, the“BullyBuster” group. This group, with its barycenter spread in the South and Ilands of Italy, will attract theparticipation of other interdisciplinary labs and aim at representing the “reference” actor for any institutionsinterested in being updated and concurring actively to the design of advanced countermeasures. For theabove reasons, we selected the “human wellbeing” as a strategic emerging topic of BB2, with the “health”cluster and the related subcluster highlighting the role of people-centered solutions
Period: November 2023 – November 2025