On behalf of our Funding Partner Meedan, Birmingham City University are excited to open a call for expressions of interest in two new PhD Studentships currently being created. The guidance given below will provide an indication of what Studentships of this type traditionally cover when fully established. Further details about the project are outlined below, as well as guidance on how to register an expression of interest in this project.
Doctoral Training Grant Funding Information
When set up, a Studentship would follow the traditional model of including a 36 month fully funded PhD Studentship, set in-line with the Research Council values. For 2024/5, this will be £19,237 per year. The tax-free stipend would be paid monthly. This PhD Studentship would also include a Full-Time Fee Scholarship for up to 3 years. The funding would be subject to your continued registration on the research degree, making satisfactory progression within your PhD, as well as attendance on and successful completion of the Postgraduate Certificate in Research Practice.
All applicants would receive the same stipend irrespective of fee status.
This Studentship is subject to external funding from our partner.
Closing Date for Expressions of Interest:
Midday (UK Time) on Monday 30th September 2024. These projects would be set up with a start date of the 3rd February 2025.
How to Submit an Expression of Interest:
Please note: this opportunity is limited to candidates holding citizenship of a country on the DAC list of ODA recipients.
To submit an expression of interest, please follow the below steps:
- Complete the BCU Online Application Form.
- Complete the Doctoral Studentship Proposal Form in full, ensuring that you quote the project ID. You will be required to upload your proposal in place of a personal statement on the BCU online application form.
- Upload two references to your online application form (at least one of which must be an academic reference).
- Upload your qualification(s) for entry onto the research degree programme. This will be Bachelor/Master’s certificate(s) and transcript(s).
- International applicants must also provide a valid English language qualification. Please see the list of English language qualifications accepted here. Please check the individual research degree course page for the required scores.
Following the above steps will complete the expression of interest process. Our Research Admissions and Funding Teams would be in touch in due course to follow up with you on the status of your expression of interest, and any further steps required.
Project Title:
Protecting an informed electorate: understanding and preventing electoral misinformation in the Larger World
Project Lead:
Dr Trust Matsilele
Project ID:
ADM-02- 41393911
Project Description:
This project will address one of the priority research areas of Meedan’s strategic work in the Larger World (aka Global South): information support during elections. The sanctity of democracy and electoral outcomes rests on voters’ ability to access accurate, reliable and verifiable information. However, recent scholarship (e.g. Wilder and Vorobeychik 2019) has demonstrated how contemporary media environments make it easy to manipulate elections. The past decade has witnessed a surge of fake news as part of electoral campaigns strategies: fake news travels quickly and broadly, making it essential that we study the ecosystem of fake news, especially during elections, to ensure citizens make informed decisions.
This project will draw on an archive of queries about potential electoral misinformation submitted to fact-verification tiplines run by US non-profit Meedan for 23 elections between 2016 and 2024, across twelve countries, supplementing this dataset with qualitative research in a focus country or countries. Through analysing this material, the project will explore the relationship between misinformation and election integrity, to better understand which forms of misinformation pose the most significant threat to an informed electorate.
Anticipated findings and contributions to knowledge:
This project will sit alongside Meedan’s other research on the tipline datasets, which has focused on machine learning, AI and large language models (LLMs, which underpin chatbots like ChatGPT), offering a valuable AHSS perspective. Its results will, in the first instance, enhance these explorations by providing greater insight into why some forms of electoral misinformation are more problematic than others. The research will also deepen our understanding of the spread of electoral misinformation, gathering a sense of who circulates these stories, how, and why, and drawing out some of the differences between different electoral contexts (elections in different countries and regions, but also different kinds of elections). Importantly, these findings will be situated in contexts outside the Global North, allowing for a far more inclusive view of the challenges that electoral misinformation presents, revealing a greater sense of the diversity of forms it can take, and offering insight into the weaknesses of existing approaches to the regulation of social media and messaging platforms in democratic societies.
Person Specification:
Please note: this opportunity is limited to candidates holding citizenship of a country on the DAC list of ODA recipients.
To apply for this PhD research degree you should have, or expect to be awarded, a Master's degree in Media & Cultural Studies or a related subject area.
Exceptional candidates without a Master's degree, but holding a first class Bachelor's degree in Media & Cultural Studies or a related subject area may be considered.
We also welcome enquiries from potential PhD researchers without formal academic qualifications but with appropriate levels of professional experience.
International applicants must also provide a valid English language qualification, such as International English Language Test System (IELTS) or equivalent with an overall score of 7 with no band below 6.5.
A successful candidate will work with supervisors at BCU and at a partner university in an ODA recipient country, as well as spending part of the studentship embedded within the Meedan research team.
For enquiries about the project content, please contact: trust.matsilele@bcu.ac.uk and nick.webber@bcu.ac.uk