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On 15 October 2024, Miklós Sebők and Rebeka Kiss held a course on the use of generative AI in research to 50+ researchers at HUN-REN. The course focused on the increasing significance of generative AI tools in academic research.The full-day training was structured in three key parts. The first section introduced participants to the conceptual foundations of generative AI. The second section explored practical applications in research, such as prompt engineering, selecting appropriate AI models for different research tasks, and assessing the cost of different AI tools. In the third section, the course covered essential ethical and legal considerations, such as data management, how to properly cite the use of these tools, and how to comply with the requirements of academic journals.Participants were encouraged to submit their own research questions and data in advance, for which they received tailored solutions using generative AI during the course. The course syllabus is available here: https://poltextlab.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/GenAI_tematika.pdf. The event was supported by the European Union within the framework of the RRF-2.3.1-21-2022-00004 Artificial Intelligence National Laboratory Program and the HUN-REN Hungarian Research Network.

On 14-15 October 2024, poltextLAB, in collaboration with ERCIM (European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics) co-hosted the Beyond Compliance 2024 Forum on Digital Ethics in Research. The event, held in Budapest gathered leading experts to discuss the ethical challenges that researchers face in the digital era, with a strong focus on research integrity beyond regulatory frameworks. This year’s program featured a diverse lineup of keynotes, interactive sessions, and panel discussions addressing a wide range of pressing topics. More details about the programme are available at: https://www.ercim.eu/beyond-compliance.

Miklós Sebők has been among the award winners of the National Research, Development and Innovation Office’s Science Patronage Programme. The main objective of the Science Patronage call, funded by the National Research, Development and Innovation Fund, is to promote the internationalisation of the Hungarian scientific research community and to support the development of open science in Hungary. Sebők has received 6 223 000 HUF to organize an international conference in Hungary. Read more about the Science Patronage call (in Hungarian): https://nkfih.gov.hu/palyazoknak/nkfi-alap/tamogatott-projektek-mec24. 

On 7 October 2024, Ákos Holányi was guest speaker at the Small (nation-)states research centre at the Institute of International Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences of Charles University in Prague. In his lecture, he introduced the Babel Machine and presented the results of the first year of poltextLAB’s flagship research endeavour, the Momentum V-SHIFT project. He showed how the saliency of and sentiment towards great powers and European powers have changed over thirty years in the Croatian, Czech, and Hungarian parliaments.

On the second day of the 28th Annual Conference of Central European Political Science Association (CEPSA) in Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, Lithuania, Ákos Holányi participated in the Parliamentarism and national bargaining in the EU panel with research from poltextLAB’s Momentum V-SHIFT project. In his presentation entitled “Drifting towards the East? Sentiment towards great powers in Central-Eastern European parliaments”, he discussed how the salience of and sentiment towards China, Russia, and the United States changed over thirty years in Croatian, Czech, and Hungarian parliaments. The program of the conference is available here: https://www.cepsanet.org/uploads/1/2/2/4/122417138/cepsa-program-2024.pdf

On the first day of the 28th Annual Conference of Central European Political Science Association (CEPSA) in Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, Lithuania, Ákos Holányi participated in the The Russian war in Ukraine panel with research from poltextLAB’s V4 Media Slant project. In his presentation entitled “The Depiction of the War in Ukraine” in Central European media, he showed preliminary results about how the topics and emotional content of Czech and Hungarian media coverage of the Russia-Ukraine War changed in the first two years of the invasion. The program of the conference is available here: https://www.cepsanet.org/uploads/1/2/2/4/122417138/cepsa-program-2024.pdf.

The following interns join poltextLAB in the 2024-25 autumn semester: Patrik Bodó  Hanna Csikós  Tamás Fenyődi  Zsolt Geszler  Dániel Nagy  Dénes Stumpf 

On September 26, 2024, a new article has been published by Miklós Sebők, Orsolya Ring, Márk György Kis, Martin Balázs Bánóczy and Ágnes Dinnyés in the Journal of Computational Social Science. The title of the article is “The geopolitics of vaccine media representation in Orbán’s Hungary—an AI-supported sentiment analysis.” The publication is available here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42001-024-00325-z.