PhD Student (full position)
At the Institute of Communication and Media Studies (ikmb) of the University
of Bern, a position is available as a PhD Student (full position).
The position will be available from July 1st, 2023 (or by appointment) for
an initial period of three and half years. It is intended to serve the purpose
of scientific qualification.
Tasks
Conducting research in the SNF-sponsored project “Algorithm audit of the
impact of user- and system-side factors on web search bias in the context
of federal popular votes in Switzerland” investigating the impact of
algorithmic bias on the democratic decision-making:
Developing approaches for automated news frame detection in the text-based
algorithmic system outputs
Contributing to data preprocessing (e.g. html-to-text conversion) and
automated translation tasks
Calculating similarity and entropy metrics for measuring the variation in
algorithmic system outputs
Producing outstanding academic publications
Contributing to the general tasks of the Institute
Teaching of courses in the BA Social Sciences
Requirements
Outstanding Master degree in computational social science, communication
science, a related social science discipline, or computer science
Strong interest in political communication and/or online communication
with a particular emphasis on algorithmic systems/AI
Very good skills in the field of machine learning and natural language
processing
Experience with the use of deep learning for textual analysis, in
particular of transformer models, is beneficial
Good skills in the field of empirical social science / statistics
Very good command of English
Ability to work in a team and reliability
We offer
An attractive working environment at the Institute for Communication and Media
Science at the University of Bern: a collegial team, cooperation and exchange,
as well as the freedom to develop your own ideas. Employment adheres to the
regulations of the Canton of Berne.
Applications shall include:
1) letter of motivation including research interests / ideas
2) CV
3) list of publications (if there are any)
4) certificates
5) one central chapter of the MA-thesis or another publication
The complete application should be mailed as a single pdf file by May 12th,
2023 to Dr. Mykola Makhortykh ([email protected]). For further
information, please contact Dr. Mykola Makhortykh.
The job interviews will take place on the 24th of May.
www. unibe.ch