Nima Thing
Computational Social Science Researcher · Political Communication, Online Discourse & Alternative Media · Berlin
Berlin, Germany
Hi there 👋, Welcome to my portfolio website!
I am an early-career computational social science researcher based in Berlin, originally from Kathmandu, Nepal. I worked as a software engineer from 2019 to 2022 before moving into data science and computational social science, with a focus on how political communication behaves on digital platforms.
At logiq.media, I currently lead the development of Elfbot, an AI-assisted, human-in-the-loop prototype for Facebook comment moderation that helps identify trolls and toxic content and moderate them based on organization’s brand and policy guidelines.
I have a Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics and Communication (2014-2018) from Kathmandu Engineering College and a postgraduate diploma in research writing at The Open Institute for Social Science(coursework completed (2022), capstone in-progress (2026 onwards)) from Nepal. I came to Germany in 2023, for my Master of Data Science for Public Policy at the Hertie School, supported by a Data for Good scholarship which I completed in 2025 (See more, under CSS Journey).
In MSc thesis, I developed multimodal TikTok virality and political engagement framework specific to a particular election setting in Nepal. While the technical focus was predictive modelling using ML, what drew me further into this field was the question of unequal political visibility: how some political actors gain attention, legitimacy, and momentum through platform dynamics, creator networks, and public frustration with established institutions. Although the empirical case was Nepal, my research was shaped by broader political communication debates and scholarships in Germany, the EU, and the US.
Over the past three years, my work has increasingly focused on misinformation, disinformation, hate speech and the use of machine learning and statistical methods to understand online political behaviour. I want to pursue a PhD in computational social science broadly focused on that topic (more details on Research). I do not yet have peer-reviewed journal publications. So far, my outputs include a submitted master’s thesis, working papers, posters, and talks, all listed under Research outputs.
news
| Aug 17, 2026 | Presented Poster at GlobalSouthAI @ IJCAI-ECAI 2026 for Auditing and Mitigating Group Disparities in Transformer-Based Toxic Comment Classification. And won the Best 3MT Presenter Award. |
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| Aug 05, 2026 | Accepted poster at GlobalSouthAI @ IJCAI-ECAI 2026 for Auditing and Mitigating Group Disparities in Transformer-Based Toxic Comment Classification. Presentation details will be added later. |
| Jun 25, 2026 | Presented poster at “How Are You, Democracy?” conference in Karlsruhe (25 June 2026) — Beyond the ban: co-engagement network signals on Nepali Reddit in the run-up to the Sep 8 Gen Z protest. |
| Jun 11, 2026 | Abstract accepted for a poster at “Youth in a Digital Society”, organized by the University Research Focus “Education for the Future,” University of Potsdam (poster session 8 October 2026). |
| Jun 10, 2026 | Accepted poster at “How Are You, Democracy?” conference in Karlsruhe (25 June 2026) — Beyond the ban: co-engagement network signals on Nepali Reddit in the run-up to the Sep 8 Gen Z protest. |
| May 12, 2026 | Presented a session called “AI, Democracy and Elections module” under “AI for Governance and Public Good” to participants from Project Abhaya from Kathmandu, Nepal. |
| Apr 24, 2026 | Presented my Master Thesis “TikTok Virality and Political Engagement in Nepal’s 2022 Elections” at Turkey Computational Social Science Conference (TCSS) 2026 |
| Apr 01, 2026 | Started with European Narrative Observatory project called SHIFT, a multi-country project studying harmful online narratives and testing creator-led counter-messaging by linking audience segmentation, platform use, and channel-level engagement. (Logiq Media) |
selected research
- Fact-Checking in the Feed: The Gap Between Output Metrics and Public Reception2026Mixed-methods commentary, co-authored at logiq.media. Submitted to the HKS Misinformation Review (under review).
- Beyond the Ballot: TikTok Virality and Political Engagement in Nepal’s 2022 Election2025MSc thesis (Hertie School, 2025). Submitted and completed; revised after committee feedback. Supervised by Prof. Simon Munzert. Multimodal machine-learning pipeline (CLIP, Whisper, XGBoost) for political-virality prediction in a low-resource, multilingual electoral context. Not yet published as a journal article.