A Brazilian Portuguese Moral Foundations Dictionary for Fake News classification

Abstract

The Moral Foundations Theory defines foundations to explain human moral reasoning and its role in the decision-making process, including how information is perceived and interpreted. A problem related to aspects of moral values that is currently gaining notoriety is the spread of false information known as "Fake News". Natural language processing techniques are being used in social sciences studies to deal with the Fake News detection task. This work introduces and brings details from the development of MFD-BR, a Brazilian Portuguese lexicon based on the Moral Foundations Theory, designed to measure Moral Sentiment in texts. It also contributes to Fake News detection strategies by assessing the difference in moral dimensions to distinguish between reliable sources texts and texts originated from low-reputation sources (considered by fact-checking agencies).