Sarcasm Detection in Tweets: A Feature-based Approach using Supervised Machine Learning Models

Abstract

Sarcasm (i.e., the use of irony to mock or convey contempt) detection in tweets and other social media platforms is one of the problems facing the regulation and moderation of social media content. Sarcasm is difficult to detect, even for humans, due to the deliberate ambiguity in using words. Existing approaches to automatic sarcasm detection primarily rely on lexical and linguistic cues. However, these approaches have produced little or no significant improvement in terms of the accuracy of sentiment. We propose implementing a robust and efficient system to detect sarcasm to improve accuracy for sentiment analysis. In this study, four sets of features include various types of sarcasm commonly used in social media. These feature sets are used to classify tweets into sarcastic and non-sarcastic. This study reveals a sarcastic feature set with an effective supervised machine learning model, leading to better accuracy. Results show that Decision Tree (91.84%) and Random Forest (91.90%) outperform in terms of accuracy compared to other supervised machine learning algorithms for the right features selection. The paper has highlighted the suitable supervised machine learning models along with its appropriate feature set for detecting sarcasm in tweets.