Nima Thing

Hi there 👋, welcome to my portfolio website!

I am a software engineer turned computational social scientist. In 2025, I graduated with a Master of Data Science for Public Policy from the Hertie School, Berlin. In my MSc thesis, I developed a multimodal framework to study TikTok virality and political engagement in Nepal’s 2022 local elections. Although the empirical case was Nepal, my research was shaped by broader political communication debates and scholarship in Germany, the EU, and the US. Right now, my research interest broadly lies in understanding how political communication behaves on digital platforms.

At logiq.media (LM), I currently lead the development of Elfbot, an AI-assisted, human-in-the-loop prototype social media moderation bot that helps identify and moderate likely toxic comments, hate speech, or misinformation, while ensuring that legitimate political discourse remains visible. Through LM, I also work with EU research partners on the EU-funded SHIFT project, where we’re moving beyond detection and debunking to understand what actually works to counter harmful narratives.

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 am currently applying for PhD positions in computational social science broadly focused on that topic (more details on Research). So far, my outputs include an extended abstract in conference proceedings, a master’s thesis, working papers, posters, and talks, all listed under Research outputs.