The many faces of GESIS
Vita
Ahrabhi Kathirgamalingam is a researcher in the Transparent Social Analytics team in the Computational Social Science department. She studied communication sciences and media management and is completing her doctorate at the University of Vienna on the topic of ‘Automated detection of racism in text data’. Previously, she worked at the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) as a researcher in the areas of ‘Research Data & Methods’ and ‘Social Cohesion in Digital Media Environments’ (2024-2025) and as a sowi.docs Fellow at the Computational Communication Science Lab at the University of Vienna (2021-2024).Service
Ahrabhi supports the Methods Hub. The Methods Hub is a platform for tools, tutorials, and interactive learning environments for computer-based methods in the social sciences.Research
Ahrabhi's research interests include phenomena such as polarization, racism and migration in mediated discourses, as well as methodological questions relating to social bias and Computational Social Science.Publications
Journal article
Kathirgamalingam, Ahrabhi, Fabienne Lind, and Hajo G Boomgaarden. 2025. "Measuring racism and related concepts using computational text-as-data approaches: a systematic literature review." Annals of the International Communication Association 49 (3): 241-256. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/anncom/wlaf013.
Lind, Fabienne, Hyunjin Song, Hajo G. Boomgaarden, Ahrabhi Kathirgamalingam, Pamina Syed Ali, and Rens Vliegenthart. 2025. "Research Practices in Comparative Communication Research: Visibility, Topical and Geographical Disparities, and their Longitudinal Patterns." International Journal of Communication 19: 1103-1128. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/23510.
Working and discussion paper
Kathirgamalingam, Ahrabhi, Aytalina Kulichkina, Jana Bernhard-Harrer, and Valerie Hase. 2025. Reflecting on Social Bias: Challenges and Opportunities for Computational Social Science. OSF Preprints Preprint. doi: https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/xr45y_v1.
Presentation at a conference
Kathirgamalingam, Ahrabhi, Ina Brandes, Manfred Bayer, Katrin Weller, and Tim Majchrzak. 2025. "Academic Freedom: Foundations for the Future: Panel discussion." Creating Spaces for Digital Futures, Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) GmbH, Bochum, 2025-10-10.
Kathirgamalingam, Ahrabhi. 2025. "Deepening Inequalities or Bridging Divides? Tracing Racist Language in German News Media Over Time." European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) General Conference 2025, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, 2025-08-28.
Choucair, Tariq, Laura Vodden, Ahrabhi Kathirgamalingam, Paul Pressmann, Fabio Giglietto, Katharina Esau, Cornelius Puschmann, Axel Bruns, Giada Marino, and Bruna Paroni. 2025. "Humans and machines in the loop: Rethinking LLMs for conflict and disagreement in content analysis for social complex phenomena." AoIR Association of Internet Researchers Conference 2025, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro, 2025-10-16.
Kathirgamalingam, Ahrabhi, Indira Sen, and Angelie Kraft. 2025. "Marginalized Voices and Perspectives in Computational Methods." COMPTEXT 2025, Vienna , University of Vienna, Vienna, 2025-04-26.
Bernhard-Harrer, Jana, Ahrabhi Kathirgamalingam, and Hajo G. Boomgaarden. 2025. "Predicting Sentiment Towards Actors in News Media." COMPTEXT 2025, Vienna , University of Vienna, Vienna, 2025-04-26.
Kathirgamalingam, Ahrabhi. 2025. "Tracing Racism in Textual Data: A CSS Perspective." Computational Social Science: AI and Society – Exploring Inequality in the Digital Age, University of Mannheim, Mannheim, 2025-05-15.
Kathirgamalingam, Ahrabhi, Hendrik Meyer, Mike Farjam, Christiane Eilders, and Michael Brüggemann. 2025. "Unpacking the Blame Game? Opportunities and Barriers to Automated Detection of Blame Attribution in News Media." Creating Spaces for Digital Futures, Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) GmbH, Bochum, 2025-10-09.
Presentation not at a conference
Kathirgamalingam, Ahrabhi. 2025. "Content Analysis meets Silicon Sampling. Insights into persona-assigned prompting with LLMs." DFG Network "Potentials and Challenges of Computational Communication Science Using the Example of Online Protest" Let's try AI Workshop, Freie Universität Berlin, 2025-07-22.
Event
Kathirgamalingam, Ahrabhi. 2025. "From Awareness to Action: Addressing Discrimination and Power in Academia." Qualification Programme Digitalisation Research, Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) GmbH, Bochum, 2025-05-13.