PhD Position Focusing on Media Legitimacy of Public Organizations

Are you interested in the role of media and framing in fostering or undermining the legitimacy of public organizations? Do you want to know more about why some public organizations are typically scrutinized more in news media or on social media than  others?

We are looking for an ambitious PhD Researcher for the three-year and two-months project “Contesting Media Legitimacy of Public Organizations: Construction, Change and Impact of Legitimacy Framing”. The PhD Candidate is embedded in the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR)  and is part of the Corporate Communication Program Group .  

What are you going to do

Media play a crucial role in shaping legitimacy perceptions of public organizations among societal stakeholders. This is particularly the case when the legitimacy of these types of organizations and their policies is challenged through news media coverage or social media. Due to an increasingly polarized and mediatized socio-political environment, public organizations struggle with public support and societal acceptance. In this project, you will investigate the role of media in the communicative construction of legitimacy framing of public organizations. Taken together, this project will provide more insights into the importance, communicative construction, communicative use, and impact of legitimacy framing of public organizations.

Methods used in the project range from quantitative (content analysis, experiment) to qualitative (semi-structured interviews). The PhD Candidate will write a paper-based dissertation and strive to publish the results of individual sub-studies in important journals in the field of communication science.

Tasks include:

• completing an English-language PhD dissertation consisting of research articles within the appointment period;
• conducting qualitative interviews with communication professionals from public organizations;
• conducting a quantitative content analysis of media legitimacy framing of public organizations within Dutch media;
• conducting an experiment on effects of different types of media legitimacy framing;
• conducting data analysis;
• presenting the work at national and international conferences;
• spending 10% of your time on teaching-related tasks.