Étienne Ollion is a CNRS Research Director in sociology and a Professor at École Polytechnique. He is also a Hi! PARIS Fellow for the 2025-2028 period and a member of its scientific committee.

His research focuses on politics, power, media, and computational methods for the social sciences. His work often combines ethnographic research, quantitative analysis, and AI-based tools to study political life and social structures. He is the author of Les candidats. Novices et professionnels en politique, a book on the 2017 French National Assembly and the arrival of political newcomers, later published in English as The Candidates. He also co-authored Une étrange victoire with Michaël Foessel, which explores transformations in the public sphere and the recent success of the far right. Alongside his research on politics and media, he works on digital data and artificial intelligence for social sciences. He leads the Computational Social Sciences initiative at IP Paris and regularly teaches methods related to AI, NLP, and digital research in France and abroad.

His Hi! PARIS Fellowship project uses advanced artificial intelligence methods, especially Natural Language Processing, to analyze political coverage in traditional media at large scale. The project focuses on newspapers, television, and radio, using decades of French-language textual and audiovisual archives provided through a partnership with Aday.

The project aims to better understand how media contribute to political representation, democratic legitimacy, and polarization. It will study the evolution of “horse-race journalism,” media representations of political leaders, including gender disparities and the framing of far-right parties, as well as the impact of media discourse on individual behavior, such as the relationship between unemployment stigma in the press and job-seeking activity.

Learn more about his project here.