POLAR Project

Framing Polemical Discourse

ho-won.kim@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr (POLAR Project) — Thu, 07 May 2026 14:00:00 +0200

Geoffrey Raymond (UC Santa Barbara) — “Weaponizing doubt: Shifting the boundaries of legitimate political discourse by ‘just asking questions’”

Ruth Amossy (Tel Aviv University) — “To what extent can an automated procedure detect polemical discourse? The contribution of Discourse Analysis”

Kick-off Workshop: Building the POLAR Research Framework

ho-won.kim@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr (POLAR Project) — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 10:00:00 +0100

Research workshop to align objectives, data sources, and the collaboration plan. We established the first version of the methodological roadmap for qualitative analysis and NLP-based detection.

About

ho-won.kim@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr (POLAR Project) — Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

POLAR (Polemics in Online Language and Automated Recognition) is a 24-month collaborative research project funded within the YUFE Alliance and hosted at Université Sorbonne Nouvelle.

The project investigates how online speakers express stance and controversy through covert or overt discursive strategies (e.g., distancing, alignment, rhetorical questions or remarks), and how such strategies can be identified qualitatively and then detected automatically.

Research aims

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Identify & describe

Distance and controversy markers functioning as polemic markers, and model how they operate in context.

Fabienne Baider

ho-won.kim@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr (POLAR Project) — Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Role: Co-lead (Co-PI)
Institution: University of Cyprus

Emotion annotation; qualitative analysis of polarising/discriminatory online discourse (English/Greek).

Funding & Partners

ho-won.kim@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr (POLAR Project) — Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Funding

This project is funded by the YUFE Alliance.

Host University

The project is hosted by Sorbonne Nouvelle University.

Partner institutions

The project is carried out by partner institutions within the YUFE Alliance.

Georgeta Cislaru

ho-won.kim@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr (POLAR Project) — Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Role: Principal Investigator (PI)
Institution: Université Sorbonne Nouvelle (Host)

Semantics & pragmatics; discourse markers; online discourse analysis.

Ho Won Kim

ho-won.kim@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr (POLAR Project) — Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Role: Researcher
Institution: Université Sorbonne Nouvelle (Host)

Discourse analysis; functionalist lexical analysis

Luna De Bruyne

ho-won.kim@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr (POLAR Project) — Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Role: Co-investigator
Institution: University of Antwerp

Computational linguistics; automated content analysis; sentiment analysis; emotion detection.

Outputs

ho-won.kim@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr (POLAR Project) — Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Research outputs from the POLAR Project — including academic papers, annotated datasets, and presentations. This page will be updated as the project progresses.

Papers

No papers published yet — check back soon.

Datasets

No datasets released yet — check back soon.

Talks

No talks listed yet — check back soon.

Sandrine Reboul-Touré

ho-won.kim@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr (POLAR Project) — Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Role: Co-investigator
Institution: Université Sorbonne Nouvelle (Host)

Lexical analysis; online discourse analysis.