As the funding partner for these research degrees at Birmingham City University (BCU), we’re excited to announce that expressions of interest will be accepted from now until Sept. 30. Awardees will begin work on their projects starting February 2025.
The impact of misinformation on electoral integrity
The first studentship will focus on research into instances of election-related misinformation, drawing on a number of datasets created by Meedan and its network of community partners through the implementation of tiplines during 23 elections in areas throughout the Larger World between 2016 and 2024.
Research will focus on the relationship between election integrity and associated forms of misinformation, with the goal of identifying what kinds of misinformation present the greatest risk to the electoral process.
Applicants with a master’s degree in media and cultural studies, or a related field, are well positioned to succeed in this role, though stand-out candidates possessing a bachelor’s degree — or relevant professional experience in lieu of a degree — will also be considered.
Visit BCU’s announcement about the election misinformation studentship for a complete set of guidelines.
A linguistic approach to technology-facilitated gender-based violence
The second studentship is focused on uncovering and assessing the language patterns that emerge when reviewing documented instances of technology-facilitated gender-based violence sourced from social media and messaging apps.
Large-scale linguistic analysis of this data will be used to discover markers that may help to quickly and reliably identify and address occurrences of gendered violence as they are posted or received.
Candidates with master’s degrees in linguistics or an associated discipline are encouraged to apply, and the committee will also consider exceptional submissions from individuals who hold a bachelor’s degree or who have significant outside experience but not a formal credential.
Take a look at BCU’s entry on the studentship for researching technology-facilitated gender-based violence for more information.
Prepare your application
To submit an expression of interest, you’ll need to complete a doctoral studentship proposal that responds to the project and shows how you might approach the research problem. When this is finished, complete the BCU online application form, add the relevant project ID, and upload the proposal document in place of a personal statement. You will need to supply two references, with at least one of them speaking to your academic background. You’ll also need to provide copies of degree certificates, academic transcripts, and evidence of proficiency in English.
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Footnotes
- Online conversations are heavily influenced by news coverage, like the 2022 Supreme Court decision on abortion. The relationship is less clear between big breaking news and specific increases in online misinformation.
- The tweets analyzed were a random sample qualitatively coded as “misinformation” or “not misinformation” by two qualitative coders trained in public health and internet studies.
- This method used Twitter’s historical search API
- The peak was a significant outlier compared to days before it using Grubbs' test for outliers for Chemical Abortion (p<0.2 for the decision; p<0.003 for the leak) and Herbal Abortion (p<0.001 for the decision and leak).
- All our searches were case insensitive and could match substrings; so, “revers” matches “reverse”, “reversal”, etc.
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