TakeLab at SemEval-2016 Task 6: Stance classification in tweets using a genetic algorithm based ensemble

Abstract

This paper describes our system for the detection of stances in tweets submitted to SemEval 2016 Task 6A. The system uses an ensemble of learning algorithms, fine-tuned using a genetic algorithm. We experiment with various offthe-shelf classifiers and build our model using standard lexical and a number of task-specific features. Our system ranked 3rd among the 19 systems submitted to this task..