Look What You Made Us Cluster: Hate Narrative Extraction from Reddit Discourse

Abstract

Narrative extraction allows us to identify online hate narratives, supporting the construction of rigorous detection systems. Existing computational approaches, however, are limited in precision as they rely on semantic representations, which tend to capture only surface-level meaning. To detect more precise and interpretable narratives, we present an extraction pipeline that represents narratives as entity-evaluation pairs. Narratives are extracted using a Large Language Model (LLM) reasoning process that extends Aspect-Based Sentiment Analysis, identifying the aspect, classifying its judgement type as the basis for evaluation, and deriving the evaluation accordingly. Extracted narratives are then clustered using Leiden, following which clusters are resolved to an intended level of granularity through an LLM-guided refinement process. We illustrate this narrative pipeline with English Reddit comments from 2024 that criticize Taylor Swift, analyzing a representative cluster that exhibits hate speech patterns to demonstrate its interpretive value.