Conversations with Sergei Guriev – Details, episodes & analysis

How recommendation algorithms operate on social media to establish relationships with the political positions of users? In order to answer this question, Tim Faverjon designed various models and analysed their predictions, specifically focusing on political attitudes and socio-demographic characteristics. He emphasises the importance of looking inside the algorithms rather than just observing their outcomes to understand their influence on users.

Tim Faverjon, PhD candidate at the médialab, data science engineer and mathematician, carries out his research at the interface between machine learning and sociology. His current research focuses on recommendation algorithms and politics: what do algorithms “know” about user ideology? How is this information used? What impact on the digital public debate?

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The digital inequalities are considerable and directly linked to social inequalities: less money, less equipment, less time, less training. How is political activism developed in this context? With what consequences? Jen Schradie has been studying these questions for over 10 years by combining quantitative, qualitative and computational studies. By sharing her conclusions with us, she also tells us about the impacts of artificial intelligence on research and teaching activities. Next year, she will give a course at Sciences Po on the use of Gen AI in research.

Jen Schradie is an Assistant Professor, researcher at the Centre for Research on Social InequalitieS (CRIS). 

Additional Resources:

• Schradie, Jen, and Liam Bekirsky, 'The Digital Production Gap in the Algorithmic Era', in Deana A. Rohlinger, and Sarah Sobieraj (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Digital Media Sociology (2022; online edn, Oxford Academic, 8 Oct. 2020)

• Schradie, Jen, "Context, class, and community: a methodological framework for studying labor organizing and digital unionizing", Information, Communication & Society, vol. 24, 2021, n° 5, p 700-716

• Schradie, Jen - "The Great Equalizer Reproduces Inequality: How the Digital Divide Is a Class Power Divide", Political Power and Social Theory, vol. 37, 2020, Rethinking Class and Social Difference, p. 81-101

Recorded on 3 May 2024

Conversations with Sergei GURIEV  is a podcast by Sciences Po. Hélène NAUDET supervised the production of this series, with the help of Jade SOULLARD, Sciences Po Master student. Sciences Po' studio produced and mixed it.

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What encourages voters to support populist right parties? What has made Marine Le Pen’s discourse so powerful, especially with regards to its female vote share? What policies do radical right parties generally look for at the European Union level? Could support for the radical left and the radical right overlap? In this episode, Nonna Mayer, a specialist in radical ideologies and populism, answers these and many other questions regarding the rise of right-wing populism in France and Europe at large.

Nonna Mayer is an emeritus researcher at France’s Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). She is also a researcher at Sciences Po’s Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics, and was president of the French Association of Political Science between 2005 and 2016. She focuses on the rise of the radical right in Europe and France, issues of antisemitism and racism, and the intercultural interplay between minorities and majority, and amongst minority groups. 

Additional resources:

• Mayer, N. (2022). Undermining Democracy: Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour’s Populist Politics. Institut Montaigne.   
• Durovic, A. & Mayer, N. (2022). Wind of change? The reconfiguration of gender gaps in the 2022 French presidential election. The reconfiguration of gender gaps in the 2022 French presidential election. Revue française de science politique (72), p. 463-484.  
• Amengay, A., Durovic, A. & Mayer, N. (2017). The impact of gender on the Marine Le Pen vote. Revue française de science politique (67), p. 1067-1087. 

Recorded on 15th September 2023

Conversations with Sergei GURIEV  is a podcast by Sciences Po. Hélène NAUDET supervised the production of this series, with the help of Blanca GONZALEZ MARTINEZ, Sciences Po Master student in Political Science.
The Sciences Po audio department produced and mixed it.

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Social networks pose very complex challenges to governments. Those who want to sell news have become very good at creating clickbait on negative news, knowing that we are naturally more sensitive to this kind of news. Social media discourse also contributes to exaggerating minority positions. Even scientific knowledge, which is one of the factors informing good government policy, can be challenged that way, as we have seen during the pandemic. Even more worrying, social media has a feedback effect on traditional media and mainstream politicians are tempted to join in the populist drive. What can be done to counter this trend?

Answers by Emiliano Grossman, a researcher at Sciences Po’s Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics. His research focuses on political  life  institutions in Europe and more specifically in France. 

Additional resource

Emiliano Grossman, Media and Policy Making in the Digital Age, Annual Review of Political Science, vol. 25, pp. 443-46

Recorded on 14th September 2023.
Conversations with Sergei GURIEV  is a podcast by Sciences Po. Hélène NAUDET supervised the production of this series. The Sciences Po audio department produced and mixed it. 

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In this conversation, Alexander Etkind sets out the reasons why environmental challenges are largely ignored in Russia, by public authorities and more generally by society.
If this is largely explained by the weight of fossil fuels in Russia's income, there are other factors to take into account, such as state ideology, education and demography.
Alexander Etkind also presents his conception of the Anthropocene, based on the thinking of Bruno Latour on Gaia modernity.

Alexander Etkind, Professor of international relations at the Central European University. He has now launched a major project : “Politics of Anthropocene Interdisciplinary Hub”, jointly conducted by CEU and Sciences Po. 

Additionnal ressources

• Russia Against Modernity, April 2023, Polity 
• Nature's Evil: A Cultural History of Natural Resources, Wiley, Oct. 2021
    

Recorded on 14 June 2023

Talk with Sergei is a podcast by Sciences Po. Hélène Naudet supervised the production of this series, accompanied by Anaelle Vergonjeanne. The Sciences Po audio department
produced and mixed it.  

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The vulnerability of agriculture and energy production to water scarcity is not so new. Historically, this issue has been mainly addressed through the regulation of water sharing. A major problem today is that the water scarcity is worsening and that past solutions are not sufficient to resolve the problem. What are the new parameters to take into account? What public policies should be put in place? How can we adapt to the new hydrological conditions which promise to last for a long time?

This is what Giacomo Parrinello, an environmental historian, devotes a large part of his research to. In this episode Giacomo Parrinello shares with us the results of his research.

An assistant professor and researcher at Sciences Po’s Centre for History, Giacomo Parrinello is also a member of the European Society for Environmental History. For a long time, he has in particular investigated the history of the Mediterranean coast.

Additional Resources (Open Access)

• Giacomo Parrinello - Times of Drought, Visualizing Climate and Loss, Center for History and Economics, Harvard University, 2022 
• Giacomo Parrinello, G. Mathias Kondolf -  The social life of sediment. Water History, 2021
• Giacomo Parrinello, Simone Bizzi and Nicola Surian - "The retreat of the delta: a geomorphological history of the Po river basin during the twentieth century." Water History, 2021
  

Recorded on 9 June 2023

Talk with Sergei is a podcast by Sciences Po. Hélène Naudet supervised the production of this series, accompanied by Anaelle Vergonjeanne. The Sciences Po audio department produced and mixed it. 

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The mobilisation of children for climate policies started in 2018, with Greta Thunberg benefiting from strong media coverage and social media. 

After her speech at the UN Climate Action Summit, it became a concern at the level of international organisations. If children's rights were already a concern of UNICEF, the approach radically changed since international organizations had to consider young people as actors and no longer as simple victims. How did this process take place? What are its real consequences? This is what Anaelle reveals to us.

Anaëlle Vergonjeanne, is a young researcher at the Sciences Po’s Centre for International Studies. She has dedicated her doctoral thesis ‘How dare you?’ : The United Nations and children's climate commitment » (in French).

Additional Resources

• Anaëlle Vergonjeanne - Les enfants au chevet de la planète :  émergences d’une environnementalisation de l’enfance aux Nations Unies, Annuaire français de relations internationales, 2023, Éditions Panthéon-Assas.

Recorded on 10 May 2023

Conversations with Sergei GURIEV  is a podcast by Sciences Po. Hélène NAUDET supervised the production of this series. The Sciences Po audio department produced and mixed it. 

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It’s a well-known fact that rich countries pollute more than poor countries. What is less taken in account is that it is within countries and especially inside emerging countries that inequalities in terms of pollution are increasingly significant. The middle classes, in India, China or Latin America, are beginning to pollute just as much as the western middle classes. What policies should be put in place to reverse the trend?

Answers by Lucas Chancel, Associate Professor of Economics at Sciences Po's Center for Research on Social Inequalities  and affilited to the Department of Economics. Lucas Chancel is also Co-Director of the World Inequality Lab at the Paris School of Economics and Senior advisor at the European Tax Observatory.  

Additional Resources

• Lucas Chancel, Philipp, Bothe, Tancrède Voituriez -  Climate Inequality Report 2023, World Inequality Lab Study 2023
• Lucas Chancel - Global carbon inequality over 1990–2019. Nat Sustain, November 2022 
• Gregor Semieniuk, Lucas Chancel, Eulalie Saïsset, Philip B. Holden, Jean-Francois Mercure, Neil R. Edwards - Potential pension fund losses should not deter high-income countries from bold climate action, Joule, Issue 7, 2023

Recorded on 30th May, 2023

Conversations with Sergei GURIEV  is a podcast by Sciences Po. Hélène NAUDET supervised the production of this series, accompanied by Anaëlle VERGONJEANNE. The Sciences Po audio department produced and mixed it. 

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Decay, frugality, green growth; so many concepts that invite us to rethink our growth appeal as it dominated the 20th century. Where does our conception of limitless economic growth come from? What would have been the opinion of the economists of the 18th and 19th centuries who have laid down the first ideas of what growth should be? What did they think about the relationship between growth and nature? Did they really not see that natural resources are not unlimited?

Answers by Thomas Kayzel, who joined the Sciences Po’s Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics (CEE) as  a post-doc  of the Bruno Latour Fund.

Recorded on 5 May 2023

Conversations with Sergei GURIEV  is a podcast by Sciences Po. Hélène NAUDET supervised the production of this series, accompanied by Anaëlle VERGONJEANNE. The Sciences Po audio department produced and mixed it. 

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What do social movements have to say about climate change? What is their role in local and global governance of climate change? How do climate activists coordinate alternative futures in a postapocalyptic present? Some people say individual changes are needed, while others think it should come from systemic change. How does the climate movement reconcile both? 

Answers by Joost de Moor, a researcher at Sciences Po’s Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics, who has been working on these issues for years.

Additional Resources

• Joost de Moor, Jens Marquardt, Deciding whether it’s too late: How climate activists coordinate alternative futures in a postapocalyptic present, Geoforum, 2023
• Joost de Moor, Postapocalyptic narratives in climate activism: their place and impact in five European cities, Environmental Politics, 2022
• Joost de Moor, The ‘efficacy dilemma’ of transnational climate activism: the case of COP21’, Environmental Politics, 2018
• Joost de Moor, Michiel De Vydt, Katrin Uba, et al. ‘New kids on the block: taking stock of the recent cycle of climate activism ’, Social Movement Studies. 2020

Recorded on 20 April 2023 

Talk with Sergei is a podcast by Sciences Po. Hélène NAUDET supervised the production of this series, accompanied by Anaelle VERGONJEANNE. The Sciences Po audio department produced and mixed it. 

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.