Zsófia Rakovics

Zsófia Rakovics is a Lecturer at the Institute of Empirical Studies, Eötvös Loránd University, where she works in the Department of Social Research Methodology and Research Center for Computational Social Science (RC2S2). She holds a dual background in statistics and sociology, with methodological expertise in both qualitative and quantitative analysis.

• Doctoral research: Language polarization in online political discourse
• Advisor: Domonkos Sik, PhD
• Project: The layers of political public sphere in Hungary (2001-2020) (NKFIH-K-134428)

Her research combines deep learning language models (BERT, Transformer) with sociological theory to analyze political discourse dynamics. Current projects examine parliamentary speech polarization and neopopulism, while her ÚNKP 2022/23 research focuses on linguistic polarization in Hungarian parliamentary debates.

Key methodologies include structural topic modeling, word embeddings, graph transitivity analysis, and XGBoost/BERT classification for party affiliation prediction in speeches. Her work aims to democratize language model access through user-friendly interfaces for non-technical researchers.

Scientific recognition: The national project K-134428 received a 10/10 (excellent) evaluation for methodological innovation in text analysis.