Postdoc in Social Media Influence

DATALAB – Center for Digital Social Research at the Department of Media and Journalism Studies within the School of Communication and Culture at Aarhus University invites applications for a two-year postdoctoral position commencing 1 February 2024.

The Faculty of Arts, Aarhus University, in collaboration with the Independent Research Fund Denmark (IRFD), invites applications for a postdoc position on the collective project SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCE: A large-scale study of social media as infrastructures for influence in national populations with a focus on false information.

The position is a full time, fixed-term two-year position and begins on 1 February 2024or as soon as possible thereafter.

The School of Communication and Culture is committed to diversity and encourages all qualified applicants to apply regardless of their personal background.

The Project 

This collective IRFD project studies social media as infrastructures for influence in times of crises in which media are important sources of information. The larger IRFD project’s major contributions are to create (1) new understandings of the characteristics of influence on social media and new typologies of actors, (2) new methods to investigate influential actors, and (3) empirical results on which citizen’s demographic profiles are affected and where on Facebook and YouTube, as well as how citizens experience being influenced by actors who use false information. The larger project is divided into four work packages (WPs) with complementary aims:

WP1: To conceptualize and classify social media influence and influential actors of verified (by fact checkers) false content (VFC) to make their influence more visible.

WP2: To understand country variance in the demographic profile of citizens exposed to VFC compared to other content throughout the EU and how this VFC exposure is divided by topics and actors across demographic profiles, time, and events.

WP3: To understand the demographic profile of citizens exposed to VFC on YouTube in Denmark, what kind of topics and VFC actors are present in 750 Danish citizens’ viewing sessions, and how they potentially exert influence compared to other types of content e.g., by understanding significant structures in relation to actors, timeseries, flows and “rabbit holes”.

WP4: To understand the self-reported influence strategies and perceived influence of VFC actors, and what Danish citizens’ perceived influence of VFC on YouTube are.