Using Rhetorical Structure Theory for Detection of Fake Online Reviews
Olu Popoola · 2017
Fake online book reviews, where authors and 'review factories' secretly pay writers to review products and services, are an increasing concern for consumer protection regulators worldwide.This study uses Rhetorical Structure Theory to analyze a forensic collection of authentic and fake Amazon book reviews drawn from a Deceptive Review corpus to test the potential for the application of discourse coherence analysis to the specific task of developing linguistic heuristics for spotting fake reviews and to the general area of linguistic deception detection.The study introduces a theory of genre violation to explain deception in reviews, highlights the deceptive pragmatics and discourse strategies of paid review writers and confirms the utility of RST in forensic linguistic contexts.