[Commlist] Vacancy: 3-year PhD position at ZeMKI, University of Bremen

The Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research (ZeMKI) at 
the University of Bremen is offering a 3-year PhD position at the newly 
established Computational Communication and Democracy (CCD) Lab. The PhD 
student will work with the lab director, Prof. Yannis Theocharis on the 
thematic area Digital Media and Democracy: Challenges and Opportunities

Description of the position
	• Duration: 3 years
	• Starting date: 01 April 2019 or soon as possible thereafter
	• Remuneration is based on grade E13 TV-L (50% of a full-time position) 
of the German federal employee scale (an increase to 100% is possible 
depending on application for external project funding)

General description of the position:
The PhD student will be embedded in the newly established CCD Lab, a 
research-oriented environment within the interdisciplinary ZeMKI of the 
University of Bremen. The research area Digital Media and Democracy: 
Challenges and Opportunities focuses on explaining how digital media are 
transforming the quality of democracy, concentrating on issues such as 
uncivil behaviour, the activities of countercultures, new forms of 
political participation and representation, misinformation and exposure 
to news or social media content in general. The PhD student will be 
actively involved in the research activities of the CCD Lab and assist 
in the evolution of its research agenda and research output. It is 
expected that the PhD student will be an active contributor to the 
interdisciplinary intellectual environment of the ZeMKI. For more 
information about the Lab and ZeMKI please see below.

Description of research duties. The PhD student will support the Lab 
director in the development of the research area. This involves 
providing assistance with data collection and analysis, coordination of 
existing, and development of new projects for the acquisition of 
third-party funding, carrying out administrative tasks related to the 
Lab’s operation (e.g. coordination of student research assistants) and 
involvement in the Lab’s publication output. The PhD student is expected 
to develop and carry out her/his own PhD project related to the broader 
research area.

Description of teaching duties: The position involves 2 hours of 
teaching per week.

Essential qualifications

	• Master’s in Media and Communication, Political Science, Computer 
Science, Sociology, or related disciplines
	• Skills in quantitative methods
	• Skills in computational methods (a focus on text-as-data methods – 
especially automated text analysis and machine-learning – is a plus)
	• Familiarity with, or willingness to build methodological expertise 
on, network analysis
	• Experience with social media data analysis is desirable
	• Interest in political communication
	• Command of R (experience with Python is a plus)
	• Strong command of English

The University of Bremen intends to increase the proportion of women in 
science and therefore urges women to apply. Handicapped applicants with 
the same professional and personal suitability are given priority. 
Applications from people with a migration background are encouraged. 
Candidates who already hold a PhD degree will not be considered.
For any questions please contact Prof. Dr. Yannis Theocharis at: 
(yannis.theocharis /at/ uni-bremen.de)
Application

The application should include the following documents:
	• A letter of motivation (no longer than 2 pages) that outlines your 
substantive research and methodological interests. Please describe why 
you believe your profile fits with the main objectives and mission of 
the CCD Lab.
	• CV.
	• A copy of your academic certificates.
	• A writing sample (research paper, publication, or Master’s thesis).
	• Names of two referees.
Please send your application including the reference number A4/19 until 
01/03/2019 to:
Universität Bremen
Zentrum für Medien-, Kommunikations- und Informationsforschung (ZeMKI)
z.H. Frau Denise Tansel Postfach 33 04 40 28334 Bremen
Germany

or as PDF via Email (single file) at: (dtansel /at/ uni-bremen.de)

The employment is fixed-term and serves the scientific qualification, 
governed by the Act of Academic Fixed-Term Contract, §2 (1) 
(Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz). Therefore, candidates may only be 
considered for appointment if they still have the respective 
qualification periods available in accordance with § 2 (1) WissZeitVG.
 About the Computational Communication and Democracy Lab

The Lab’s substantive research agenda is driven by the idea that the 
proliferation of digital media opens up new avenues for social and 
political interaction that have radical effects on democratic processes: 
participation, organisation, representation. As such, digital 
communication offers opportunities, but also poses enormous challenges 
that fundamentally affect the quality of our democracies. Relying on 
developments in the field of computational social science as a point of 
departure, the Lab’s is also interested in methods through which new 
types of digital information can be processed and repurposed for 
studying a variety of social and political phenomena enabled by digital 
technologies. The lab has two main goals. First, to lead research on 
different but interdependent substantive topics for understanding, the 
social and political impact of digital communication and address 
methodological and epistemological issues related to conceptualisation, 
operationalisation, measurement and inference. Second, to offer BA, 
Masters, and PhD students a path for specialisation in computational and 
data science methods, with applications to communication and media research.

About the Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research (ZeMKI)

As an inter-faculty research institute, the Centre for Media, 
Communication and Information Research (ZeMKI) bundles research 
activities at the University of Bremen in the area of media and 
communicative change regarding a broad range of cultural, social, 
organisational and technological context fields. The research institute 
is committed to interdisciplinary cooperation, integrating researchers 
from the areas of media and communication studies, cultural studies, 
information management and media pedagogics. In addition to their 
research activities, ZeMKI members are active in the various media 
related study programmes at the University of Bremen. The ZeMKI oversees 
the profile-building research group "Communicative figurations of 
mediatized worlds" of the University of Bremen. The research group has 
been supported as a "Creative Unit" by the institutional strategy 
"Ambitious and Agile" of the University of Bremen funded within the 
frame of the Excellence Initiative by the German Federal and State 
Governments.



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