We are seeking to appoint a Research Associate to support the Political Rhetoric and Influence on Social Media (PRISM) project. This interdisciplinary APEX-funded project will investigate whether successful online political influencers in the US and UK use a distinctive rhetorical style or “brand” to engage audiences and communicate during political events.
Responsibilities
- Supporting the development of PRISM’s interdisciplinary framework for identifying the rhetorical brand of online political influencers across US and UK election contexts.
- Collecting, cleaning, documenting and securely managing social media datasets and metadata from the 2020 and 2024 US Presidential elections and the 2024 UK General Election.
- Designing, implementing and evaluating NLP and machine-learning approaches to classify communicative frames, linguistic features and influencer styles at scale.
- Contributing to annotation, validation, survey experiment analysis, reproducible code, academic outputs and stakeholder-facing materials with the wider project team.
About You
We are looking for a collaborative researcher with advanced computational skills and relevant social science expertise. You should demonstrate:
Essential Criteria
- A PhD, or close to completion, in Political Science, Media and Communication, Sociology or a related social science field.
- Strong programming and computational methods expertise, including Python, R or similar languages, machine learning, NLP, text mining and reproducible coding practices.
- Experience analysing social media data using qualitative & quantitative methods, with excellent academic writing, collaboration, organisation and communication skills.
Desirable Criteria
- Experience with transformer-based NLP models, web or social media engagement, policy briefing, research server environments, data visualisation or academic subjects such as social statistics.
Benefits
- Generous employer contribution pension.
- 29 days annual leave plus bank holidays, and Christmas closure.
- Ride to work and EV car scheme available.
Research Fellow / Associate - PRISM in Manchester employer: The University of Manchester
The University of Manchester is an exceptional employer, offering a dynamic work culture that prioritises innovation and collaboration. With a strong commitment to employee growth, you will have access to comprehensive benefits including leading pension schemes and health services, all while contributing to the strategic direction of a prestigious institution in a vibrant city known for its rich cultural heritage and academic excellence.
Contact Details:
The University of Manchester Recruitment Team
