Research and Innovation Associate in Digital Media and Online Misinformation

About the role:

King’s College London is looking to hire a Research Associate to conduct research on online mis/disinformation ecosystems and on opposition to mis/disinformation counter-measures in Europe. The role holder will work as part of the Horizon Europe project COMPASS (COuntering Manipulation while Preserving Authentic Speech and Society). The aim of the project is to understand how democratic societies can counter sophisticated information manipulation, without compromising fundamental rights like freedom of expression and privacy. The position provides an exceptional chance to work with an interdisciplinary and cross-institutional team of leading experts on tackling a pressing societal problem.

We are looking for a colleague who can help develop interdisciplinary approaches to study the circulation of online mis/disinformation and responses to misinformation counter-measures, informed by fields and subfields such as digital methods, issue mapping, controversy mapping, internet studies, digital media studies, science and technology studies, communication studies, platform studies, infrastructure studies and software studies.

The post holder will be supervised by Dr. Liliana Bounegru, Senior Lecturer in Digital Media, Culture and Society, and will additionally be working with Dr Gregory Asmolov, Senior Lecturer in Global Digital Politics, and Dr. Jonathan Gray, Reader in Critical Infrastructure Studies.

The Research Associate will be responsible for designing and implementing digital media research, collecting and analysing data from social media and online platforms, and writing reports and other publications. The Research Associate will also be responsible for organising collaborative research events, workshops and meetings with project partners, stakeholders and other researchers and talented students.

Key responsibilities

• Work with the KCL Co-Investigators and the larger COMPASS team on developing theoretical and methodological approaches to the problem at hand.
• Design and implement digital media research on mis/disinformation ecosystems and opposition to counter-measures.
• Conduct a comprehensive critical review of academic literature and policy reports on disinformation, propaganda and countermeasures.
• Conduct social media research with digital methods, online issue mapping, and technography by combining the use of software tools and scripts for data collection, analysis and visualisation with qualitative close reading and interpretation of corpora of materials from online platforms, and a critical understanding of online platforms as socio-technical systems.
• Organise collaborative research sprints, workshops and meetings with project partners and stakeholders, as well as other researchers and talented students.
• Participate in research sprints and coordinate researchers and students to collaboratively design and implement research.
• Work with the KCL Co-Is, the COMPASS coordinator and other project teams on all aspects of the larger project, eg by participating in project meetings and coordinating with COMPASS project partners.
• Develop project reports, deliverables and publications documenting research findings and recommendations in close collaboration with the Co-Is and other project teams.
• Prepare presentation materials for various events, conferences, and meetings.
• Participate in the everyday life of the department and represent the project at external events and conferences.

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