School of Engineering and Applied Science PhD Studentship (3 years)
Aston University -School of Engineering and Applied Science
Opinion Diffusion Analysis in the Social Web
Applications are invited for a three-year PhD studentship, supported by the School of Engineering and Applied Science, to be undertaken within the Nonlinearity and Complexity Research Group (http://www1.aston.ac.uk/eas/research/groups/ncrg/) at Aston University. The successful applicant will join an established experimental group working on machine learning and social media analysis.
The position is available to start in October 2013 (subject to negotiation)
Financial Support This studentship includes a fee bursary to cover the home/EU fees rate plus a maintenance allowance of £13,590 (increases on an annual basis). Applicants from outside the EU may apply for this studentship but will need to pay the difference between the ‘Home/EU’ and the ‘Overseas’ tuition fees, currently this is £10,372 per annum.
Background of the Project In the online social media space, it is often observed that users connected with each other are likely to express similar opinions. Such connections can be established by either explicit connections, e.g., a user follows another in Twitter or one is another’s friend in Facebook, or social interactions, e.g., a user posts another one’s message to his/her followers in Twitter (called retweet) or users express their support on someone’s post by clicking on the “Like” button in Facebook. Such social interactions are often viewed as endorsements of one’s support of another’s opinion. In many models of opinion formation, two basic social psychological mechanisms can be identified: social influence and homophily. While opinion diffusion patterns might be created by social influence, they might also be created because of dyadic similarities among neighbouring nodes in social networks without causal influence (homophily), or external influences such as marketing or mass advertising (confounding factors).
Project This PhD project aims to investigate what factors influence opinion formation and how opinions diffuse over implicit social networks on the social web using techniques from statistical modelling, machine learning, natural language processing, and data mining. In particular, it will develop novel models for opinion diffusion analysis so as to facilitate opinion prediction.
Person Specification The successful applicant should have a first class or upper second class honours degree or equivalent qualification in Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics or a related discipline. Knowledge of machine learning or natural language processing would be desirable.
For informal enquiries about this opportunity, contact Dr Yulan He (email: y.he9@aston.ac.uk, tel.: +44 (0)121 204 5329).
The online application form, reference forms and details of entry requirements, including English language are available at http://www1.aston.ac.uk/eas/research/prospective-research-students/how-to-apply/ Quoting Reference R130090
Closing Date: 15th May 2013
