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PhD seminar with Tamara Spitzer-Hobeika and Célia Nouri

The seminar on March 3, 2026 will welcome Tamara Spitzer-Hobeika, PhD candidate at New York University’s department of Media, Culture, and Communication (MCC) and a doctoral associate at Sciences Po’s medialab in Paris, and Célia Nouri, PhD candidate in Artificial Intelligence at the medialab.

Event, Research Seminar

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Salle K.011, 1 place Saint Thomas d'Aquin 75007 Paris

“Democratizing Democracy”: The NationBuilder Platform & Ecosystem, Political Communication, and the Technological Mediation of Democracies: by Tamara Spitzer-Hobeika

Abstract

This presentation examines the sociotechnical infrastructure of political campaigns. It will discuss ethnographic findings on the campaign tech industry, focusing on the current leading global provider, NationBuilder (a nonpartisan company having served customers from 140 countries in over a decade), and on its 'ecosystem' of partners --- parsing out the assumptions and values they hold on how democratic contests (whether electoral or citizen-led) actually work. By unpacking how NationBuilder 'does' political communication and mobilizing, and seeks to “democratize democracy” (in their own words), this study sheds light on the ecosystem’s role not as mere 'intermediaries' in facilitating campaigns, but as international 'mediators' of political practices, narratives, and culture.

Biography

Tamara Spitzer-Hobeika is a PhD candidate at New York University’s department of Media, Culture, and Communication (MCC), and a doctoral associate at Sciences Po’s médialab in Paris.

Improving NLP Methods to Study Online Moderation and Conversation Analysis: by Célia Nouri

Abstract

This presentation examines how Natural Language Processing (NLP) can be enhanced to better study online conversations and moderation practices. The focus is on developing context-aware models that move beyond isolated text classification by incorporating conversational structure, publication context, and community dynamics.

By combining language models with graph-based approaches, the presentation shows how computational methods can more accurately capture subtle interactional phenomena, detect harmful or critical speech, and analyze how communities regulate discourse online. More broadly, it highlights the importance of socially grounded and context-sensitive NLP for research in Computational Social Science.

Biography

Célia Nouri is a PhD candidate in Artificial Intelligence, co-supervised by Chloé Clavel at Inria (ALMAnaCH team) and Jean-Philippe Cointet at Sciences Po (médialab). Her research lies at the intersection of Natural Language Processing and Computational Social Science (CSS), with a focus on computational models of online conversations that are contextually grounded and socially aware. Methodologically, her work develops contextual NLP models that combine language representations and graph-based approaches to detect online harms, analyze moderation practices, and study opinion dynamics in online debates.

Practical informations

This seminar will be held in person and in English, on Tuesday, March 3, 2026, from 2:00 PM to 3:30 PM, in Room K.011, 1 Place Saint-Thomas d'Aquin, 75007 Paris.

Registration is mandatory via this link.