CLESSN

What CLESSN does

CLESSN (Chaire de leadership en enseignement des sciences sociales numériques) is an academic research chair housed within the Faculty of Social Sciences at Université Laval in Quebec, Canada, operating under chair holder Yannick Dufresne. Founded in 2019 and built on student-training practices dating to 2017, the organization is structured around three pillars — Formation (training), Recherche (research), and Diffusion (outreach) — and addresses technical, theoretical, and ethical challenges associated with digital data in social sciences. Its principal product is Radar+, a real-time media salience tracking platform that scrapes digital front pages of major Quebec, Canadian, and American news outlets every 10 minutes and applies a proprietary algorithm to score the relative salience of objects (people, places, events, concepts) over time, complemented by an AI model that produces objective summaries of the day's most salient news. Additional offerings include the Trousse Étudiante (an open digital social science curriculum and tool stack on R, GitHub, Quarto, and LaTeX), the Datagotchi sub-project, and Ellipse, an emerging vehicle for managing external research contracts.

The chair functions primarily as an academic research operation rather than a commercial enterprise. Funding flows originate from institutional support at Université Laval, provincial (FRQSC) and federal (CRSH) research grants and scholarships, donations from partners including Léger Marketing and Vox Pop Labs, and contract revenue routed through Ellipse. Its core participants are graduate students at Université Laval, who join a 3-credit research seminar and contribute to Radar+, Datagotchi, Polimetre, and related projects as part of thesis and dissertation work. Secondary stakeholders include government bodies, media outlets, and civil society organizations that partner on applied research, plus the general public consuming open-access outputs. Knowledge dissemination occurs through open-access websites, open-source GitHub repositories, conference presentations at APSA, CPSA, MPSA, SPSA, WPSA, and IPSA, and media appearances, with internal tracking of projects via Notion-based agile workflows.

Name

CLESSN

Legal name

CLESSN - Chaire de leadership en enseignement des sciences sociales numériques

Website

https://clessn.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2019

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

CLESSN is an academic research chair at Université Laval that trains graduate students in digital social science methods and operates Radar+, a real-time media salience tracking platform, plus the Trousse Étudiante open curriculum and the Ellipse research-contract vehicle.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Headquarters

HQ city

Québec

HQ country

Canada

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B and B2C

Offering type

Services

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Others

Revenue model

1. Government Research Funding: CLESSN receives institutional funding through Université Laval and government research councils (FRQSC, CRSH) to support its research chair activities, student funding, and research projects.
2. Graduate Student Scholarships & Fellowships: Students receive funding through Faculty of Social Sciences fellowships (e.g., $1,400 at master's over 3 installments; $14,000 at doctorate over 7 installments), government scholarships (FRQSC: $20,000/year master, $25,000/year PhD; CRSH: $27,000 master, $40,000 PhD), and research group funding.
3. Research Contracts (Ellipse): CLESSN generates revenue through research contracts managed through Ellipse, an enterprise vehicle through which the chair offers services to external clients including government, media, and civil society organizations.

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels3 records

Marketing channels6 records

Core offering

CLESSN is a university research chair that develops data-driven tools — most notably the Radar+ media-salience tracking platform — for studying digital public space, and provides training, methodological resources, and applied research services to graduate students in computational social sciences at Université Laval. It also operates the Trousse Étudiante CLESSN toolkit, the Datagotchi data-collection sub-project, and Ellipse-branded research contracts for media, government, and civil society partners.

Product overview

CLESSN (Chaire de leadership en enseignement des sciences sociales numériques) is a research chair at Université Laval comprising three main pillars: Teaching, Research, and Public Outreach. Its core products include Radar+, a real-time automated media salience tracking platform that collects and analyzes digital media front pages using proprietary algorithms, and the Trousse Étudiante, a comprehensive student toolkit. Additional offerings include Ellipse (a business venture in development) and Datagotchi (a data collection sub-project). All products are developed collaboratively with students using agile methodologies, with projects tracked via Notion and supported by cheat sheets for tools including R, LaTeX, ggplot2, RMarkdown, and Quarto.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Radar+ Automated media-salience tracking platform that monitors and analyses the visibility of topics, actors, and issues across Canadian media, supporting media-monitoring, policy, and academic research.
• Trousse Étudiante CLESSN Structured pedagogical toolkit designed for graduate students at Université Laval to learn computational social science methods and digital public-space analysis.
• Datagotchi Data-collection sub-project under CLESSN that gathers digital public-space data for use in academic and applied research.
• Ellipse

Quantifiable outcome

• Students with no prior coding experience successfully develop tools essential to their academic progression and contribute to the chair's projects.
• +2 more outcomes

Named customers1 record

Segments3 records

Ideal customer profiles1 record

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

AI capability5 records

Feature4 records

Partnerships

Ten partnerships are on record, tiered core and minor.

• GRCP (Groupe de recherche en communication politique)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerGRCP (Groupe de recherche en communication politique) at Université Laval is a core research partner. It offers $800 funding for master's students for methodological training and dissemination of research results in political communication. CLESSN students are eligible for membership and funding.
• CÉCD (Centre pour l'étude de la citoyenneté démocratique)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerCÉCD offers $1,000 funding to all members (with pre-registration before end of September), $3,000 in methodological training scholarships (e.g., ICPSR), and a thesis/memoir award competition. CLESSN students are automatically members.
• OBVIA (Observatoire international sur les impacts sociétaux de l'IA et du numérique)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerOBVIA runs an annual $15,000 thesis scholarship competition for research related to societal impacts of AI and digital technology. CLESSN students working on these themes can apply.
• CAPP (Centre d'analyse des politiques publiques)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerCAPP is a public policy analysis center at Université Laval. All CLESSN students are also members of CAPP, enabling cross-pollination of research between digital social sciences and public policy analysis.
• VITAMminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerVITAM is a research center focused on sustainable public health. Students whose research falls within sustainable health and public health domains can become members and access its funding competitions.
• IID (Institut Intelligence et Données, Université Laval)minorStrategic or Co-development PartnerAny student supervised by a researcher who is a member or collaborator of IID is automatically a student member, gaining access to IID's scholarship programs and research resources.
• CRDM (Centre de recherche en données massives, Université Laval)minorStrategic or Co-development PartnerCRDM at Université Laval brings together researchers working on big data. All master's and PhD students can apply for membership, though it does not yet offer direct student funding.
• ICPSR (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerICPSR at the University of Michigan runs one of the world's premier summer programs in quantitative methodology. Participation has been a rite of passage for CLESSN students since 2017. Multiple scholarships are available directly from ICPSR.
• EIOM (École d'outils et méthodes de recherche)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerEIOM is a summer school on research tools and methods created by CLESSN in partnership with ESEI (École supérieure d'études internationales). Held at Université Laval, it offers 3 research credits over 5 days of instruction. CLESSN actively encourages student participation.
• Université Laval - Faculté des sciences socialescoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerCLESSN is housed within the Faculty of Social Sciences at Université Laval. The faculty provides institutional support, student funding (fellowships of $1,400 at master's and $14,000 at doctorate), and administrative infrastructure.

Scale indicators3 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Direct peers

• GDELT Project: Open global event and media monitoring platform that performs large-scale, real-time tracking of news and media content. Comparable to Radar+ in methodology (automated, continuous media monitoring) though operating at global rather than Quebec-centric scope.
• MediaCloud: Open-source media analysis platform originating from MIT's Center for Civic Media. Provides comparable large-scale media content collection and analysis tools to researchers and journalists, sharing CLESSN's academic origins and open-data philosophy.
• Quid (NetBase Quid): Text and media analytics platform using NLP to analyze large volumes of unstructured content including news and social media. Comparable to CLESSN's NLP-based media salience analysis approach, though operating as a commercial enterprise platform.
• Vox Pop Labs: Public opinion and media research organization explicitly listed as a CLESSN donor. Operates in the same intersection of public opinion measurement, media analysis, and digital research methods, with comparable data-driven outputs.
• Léger Marketing: Canadian market and public opinion research firm listed as a CLESSN donor. Operates in the same public opinion polling and media research space with strong Quebec presence, providing comparable data services to government and media clients.

Broad incumbents

• Comscore: Major media measurement and analytics company providing cross-platform audience and content data. Operates in the broader media analytics space that CLESSN's Radar+ platform addresses, though at commercial enterprise scale.
• Ipsos: Global market research and public opinion firm operating across hundreds of markets. Provides overlapping public opinion and media research services to government and commercial clients, though at vastly larger scale and with broader commercial focus.
• Pew Research Center: Major US-based nonpartisan research organization producing data-driven analysis of media, public opinion, and social trends. Operates at substantially larger scale than CLESSN but shares the academic/research mission and methodology focus.

Regional players

• Numeris: Canadian audience measurement organization (formerly BBM Canada) providing media and consumer research data across Canadian markets. Shares CLESSN's Canadian media focus and serves overlapping government/media clients in the region.
• MédiaMétrie: French audience and media measurement organization. Operates in the same media analytics and audience measurement space as Radar+, with particular strength in French-language markets relevant to CLESSN's Quebec base.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/CLESSN_UL
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/clessn

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles1 record

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about CLESSN