# Amr Sobhy

> Researcher working at the intersection of media, politics and computation. Studies how news media construct political meaning — framing, ideology, editorial position — using computational methods. Founder of Le French News Lab, an independent research lab in Paris studying the French media ecosystem at scale. Previously thirteen years as a product leader and founder across AI, fintech and B2B SaaS.

Canonical site: https://amrsobhy.com/
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-5107-7574
Contact: amr@frenchnewslab.org
Languages: Arabic, English, French.

## Current work

Amr Sobhy is Founder & Director of Le French News Lab (https://frenchnewslab.org/), an
independent research lab based in Paris. The lab studies the French news media ecosystem at
scale — how outlets frame political actors, where they sit ideologically, and how editorial
position shows up in the language of headlines. The methods are computational: large headline
corpora, transformer-based classification, lexical scoring, and multi-source evidence fusion.

The research question underneath the lab's output is consistent: news framing is measurable.
Two headlines can report the same fact and still construct different political meaning — through
word choice, through which actor is given agency, and through which stories get selected at all.
The lab's work tries to quantify that difference across publishers and across time rather than
argue it case by case.

## Selected papers

All papers are published through Le French News Lab, authored under ORCID
0009-0004-5107-7574 (https://orcid.org/0009-0004-5107-7574). Machine-readable list:
https://amrsobhy.com/api/publications.json

1. "FrIdéo: French News Outlet Ideology Scoring via Multi-Source Evidence Fusion and
   Distancing-Aware Lexical Scoring" — ICNLSP, 2026.
   https://frenchnewslab.org/en/publications/frideo-french-news-ideology-scale
   Places French news outlets on an ideology scale by fusing multiple independent evidence
   sources with a lexical scoring method that accounts for rhetorical distancing.

2. "Framing by Wording, Framing by Selection: A Large-Scale Two-Dimensional Audit of French
   News Headlines, 2022–2025" — ICNLSP, 2026.
   https://frenchnewslab.org/en/publications/framing-by-wording-framing-by-selection
   Separates two distinct framing mechanisms — how a story is worded, and which stories are
   selected for coverage — and audits both across the French press.

3. "Conflict or Strategy? Asymmetric Role Framing of La France insoumise and Rassemblement
   National in French News Headlines, 2022–2025" — Le French News Lab, 2026.
   https://frenchnewslab.org/en/publications/conflict-or-strategy-lfi-rn-headline-framing
   Measures whether the two parties are given comparable roles in headline coverage, and finds
   the framing asymmetric.

4. "FrenchNews-7: Benchmarking Cross-Publisher French News Editorial Desk Classification" —
   Le French News Lab, 2026.
   https://frenchnewslab.org/en/publications/frenchnews-7-benchmarking-cross-publisher-french-news-topic-classification
   A benchmark for classifying French news into editorial desks, tested for generalisation
   across publishers rather than within a single outlet.

## Background

Before the lab, thirteen years as a product leader and founder.

Product and engineering:
- Linkurious (https://linkurious.com/) — graph investigation software.
- Finary (https://finary.com/) — personal wealth management, fintech.
- PushBots — push notification infrastructure for mobile apps; founded and led.
- IPtrace and currencystack — both acquired by apiLayer.
- Holder of US patent US10478273B2 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US10478273B2).

Civic technology in Egypt:
- MorsiMeter — tracked the Egyptian president's campaign promises against delivery; covered by
  Reuters and CNN.
- Mwazna — opened the Egyptian national budget to public reading.
- Zabatak — crowdsourced reporting of corruption and crime.

Policy:
- Youth policy at the Arab League.
- Technology and policy advisory for Internews Europe (http://internews.eu/).

## Education

- MSc Public Policy and Management, Birkbeck, University of London — Chevening Scholar.
- Executive MBA, Quantic School of Business and Technology.

## Recognition

- Forbes 30 Most Promising Young Entrepreneurs in Africa (2017).
- Top 100 Influential Young Africans, Africa Youth Awards.
- World Summit Youth Award, two-time winner.
- Data Journalism Award nominee, Open Data category (2016).
- Anzisha Prize Fellow (2011).
- Chevening Scholarship.

## Writing outside research

Publishes poetry in classical Arabic. Author listing:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/2896537.Amr_Sobhy_

## Machine-readable endpoints

- Profile (JSON): https://amrsobhy.com/api/profile.json
- Publications (JSON): https://amrsobhy.com/api/publications.json
- OpenAPI 3.1 description: https://amrsobhy.com/openapi.json
- A2A agent card: https://amrsobhy.com/.well-known/agent.json
- MCP discovery: https://amrsobhy.com/.well-known/mcp.json
- WebMCP manifest: https://amrsobhy.com/.well-known/webmcp.json
- Sitemap: https://amrsobhy.com/sitemap.xml

## Elsewhere

- ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-5107-7574
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amrsobhy/
- X: https://x.com/amrsobhy
- Le French News Lab profile: https://frenchnewslab.org/en/amr-sobhy