Reasoning About Persuasion: Can LLMs Enable Explainable Propaganda Detection?

There has been significant research on propagandistic content detection across different modalities and languages. However, most studies have primarily focused on detection, with little attention given to explanations justifying the predicted label. This is largely due to the lack of resources that provide explanations alongside annotated labels. To address this issue, we propose a multilingual (i.e., Arabic and English) explanation-enhanced dataset, the first of its kind. Additionally, we introduce an explanation-enhanced LLM for both label detection and rationale-based explanation generation. Our findings indicate that the model performs comparably while also generating explanations. We will make the dataset and experimental resources publicly available for the research community.

@article{hasanain2025_2502.16550,
  title={ Reasoning About Persuasion: Can LLMs Enable Explainable Propaganda Detection? },
  author={ Maram Hasanain and Md Arid Hasan and Mohamed Bayan Kmainasi and Elisa Sartori and Ali Ezzat Shahroor and Giovanni Da San Martino and Firoj Alam },
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.16550},
  year={ 2025 }
}