Doctoral Position in Political Communication (3+1 years)

Your responsibilities

• Acquiring detailed knowledge of the literature on political communication, political engagement, social media communication, and information flows, as well as on new methodologies (e.g. text analysis with large language models, computer vision) to study political phenomena.
• A thematic focus on computational text analysis and multi-modal social media analysis to trace and content-analyze political conversations online
• Planning and execution of subprojects within the larger project framework
• Assisting PIs in coordination of data collection processes
• Data analysis and writing scientific articles as part of the doctoral dissertation
• Presentations at international scientific conferences
• Taking part actively in the research environment of the Department of Communication and Media Research at the University of Zurich, including its PhD program.
• Submission of a PhD dissertation within the period of appointment

Your profile

• Excellent Master's degree in Communication Studies, Political Science, or a related discipline. The certificate is required at start of employment.
• Strong interest in political communication, comparative media research, social media and politics, public opinion, computational methods, experiments, and/or mixed method approaches.
• Strong command of R and/or Python
• Interest in computational social science methods, including Natural Language Processing, computer vision, and/or network analysis
• Strong command of English. Knowledge of a language related to the project's regional focus (German, Polish) is an additional asset.
• A scientific mindset, the capacity of working independently, strong affinity for cooperative collaboration, project management skills, enthusiasm for working in teams
• Willingness to move to Zurich and willingness to travel internationally to engage with project-relevant scientific communities
• Desirable: Previous work experience as a research assistant

What we offer

• Participation in a cutting-edge research project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation
• Excellent resources and working conditions to work on your doctoral degree within the framework of the project at the Department of Communication and Media Research under the supervision of Prof. Frank Esser
• Funding for conferences, additional training, and research activities
• 3 years of employment, plus possible extension of 1 year
• An internationally competitive salary (salary range between 49,000 CHF in the first year and 53,000 CHF in the third and fourth year)
• A supportive, well connected, research-oriented team
• An attractive work environment: the University of Zurich is Switzerland's largest university. Zurich is a vibrant, cosmopolitan city that regularly ranks as one of the cities with the highest quality of life in the world