Postdoctoral Research Assistant in Survey Development for AI Simulation

Location: 42 - 43 Park End Street, Oxford

Contract type: Fixed-term (18 months)

The Department of Sociology is seeking a Postdoctoral Research Assistant who will constitute a key member of the team on the DemDialogueAI Project, funded by the ESRC as part of the Trans-Atlantic Partnership Call on Democracy, Governance, and Trust.

The project proposes a cross-national study employing generative artificial intelligence, agent-based models, as well as online experiments and surveys to identify how the algorithms that shape the information users see on social media could promote democratic norms, increase trust, and decrease polarization.

About the Role

Reporting to the Principal Investigator, Christopher Barrie, the post holder will be responsible for the development of survey instruments to validate machine-coded measures of the quality online discussion as well as priming or social media clone experiments to determine the effect of online information exposure on political attitudes. The post holder will also assist in the collection of training and validation data from social media, and contribute to the analysis of real-world text data from online discussions as well as simulated platforms. The post holder will additionally provide guidance to junior members of the research group including research assistants, PhD students, and/or project volunteers.

This is a fixed-term position for 18 months and will be available from March 2025 or as soon as possible thereafter.

Application Process

The closing date for applications is 12:00 midday UK time on Friday 31 January 2025 with interviews taking place on Wednesday 19 February 2025.

You will be required to upload a CV, supporting statement and details of two referees as part of your online application. Your supporting statement should clearly set out the extent to which you meet each of the selection criteria of the post.

Further details for this position, including information on how to apply, are outlined in the job description.

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