PhD Position: Simulation & Virtual Field Experiments for Democratic Citizenship

Your research will be part of “WHAT-IF”, a European research project aimed at creating a ‘digital twin’ of the (social) media environment, in order to test possible interventions at the individual and/or societal level. The empirical core of the project is formed by a combination of individual level data donation of (social) media usage, which will be used to train and validate a LLM-based simulation. Then, this will be used to examine the role of misinformation and hate speech, among others, as well as develop solutions to counter the negative effects of these phenomena. The project also explicitly considers the legal and ethical considerations of datafying and simulating individual media usage.

Your main role in the project will be assisting in the development of the methodology and software for running virtual field experiments using the WHAT-IF simulation. This involves turning the simulated interactions into an immersive and user-friendly interface that can be used to program and run the experiments. You will lead one of the experimental studies and collaborate on the others, answering questions on the role of media diets and its effects on democratic outcomes. Additionally, you can be involved in improving the data donation infrastructure, help with the development and validation of the simulation, and/or help with the panels in 4 countries to engage a strong citizen perspective in the entire research process. Together with your supervisors, you will plan this research, execute it, and publish it in leading international journals.

Please feel free to email Wouter van Atteveldt (wouter.van.atteveldt@vu.nl) for more information on the project or to receive a summary of the project description.

Requirements:

• Completed (Research) Master degree in Political or Computational Communication Science or a related discipline
• Strong interest in (social) media usage and its effects on democratic citizenship
• Strong computational background (Python, R and/or simulation or front-end development
• Knowledge of and experience with empirical (field or experimental) studies and research designs
• Good cross-disciplinary team collaboration and oral and written communication skills
• Interest in working in an interdisciplinary and international project in collaboration with experts in computational social science, political science, communication science, simulations and ethics.

Salary Benefits:

A challenging position in a socially involved and highly interdisciplinary organization. The job profile is based on the university job ranking system and is vacant for 1 FTE. We offer you:

• a salary of € 2.872,00 (PhD) and maximum € 3.670,00 (PhD) gross per month in the fourth year, for a full-time employment
• an employment contract of initially 1 year. After a satisfactory evaluation of the initial appointment, the contract will be extended for a total duration of 4 years.

We also offer you attractive fringe benefits and arrangements, such as:

• A full-time 38-hour working week comes with a holiday leave entitlement of 232 hours per year. If you choose to work 40 hours, you have 96 extra holiday leave hours on an annual basis. For part-timers, this is calculated pro rata.
• 8% holiday allowance and 8.3% end-of-year bonus
• contribution to commuting expenses
• optional model for designing a personalized benefits package
• a wide range of sports facilities which staff may use at a modest charge

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