About the Project
About the award
This project is one of a number funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Doctoral Training Partnership to commence in September 2018. This project is in direct competition with others for funding; the projects which receive the best applicants will be awarded the funding.
The studentships will provide funding for a stipend which is currently £14,553 per annum for 2017-2018. It will provide research costs and UK/EU tuition fees at Research Council UK rates for 42 months (3.5 years) for full-time students, pro rata for part-time students.
Please note that of the total number of projects within the competition, up to 15 studentships will be filled.
Location
Streatham Campus, Exeter
Project Description
Most people access news through online platforms and social media is now the primary news source for a large and increasing proportion of the UK population. The rapid growth in use of online news sources, rather than traditional sources such as TV and print media, has created a number of novel challenges to public communication.
So-called “fake news” is a phenomenon whereby false news stories are created and propagated online, often by small-scale digital media platforms which are not subject to effective regulation and do not subscribe to normal standards of professional journalism. Fake news stories can be hard to spot; they are typically designed to appear plausible, commonly mimic the appearance of articles from reputable sources, and are disseminated through the same channels (e.g. social media) as “real” news. Fake news is argued to have large negative effects on public information and to disrupt political processes, including elections.
Meanwhile, “bots” are automated social media accounts which act within online social networks, exchange messages with other users, and often build up large networks of friends/followers. Bots can be hard to distinguish; as with fake news, bots are designed to mimic human activity and appear plausible. Bots can play a number of roles in online communication. For example, bots can spread a particular kind of content, promote a particular political view, or support/attack particular individuals. The number of bots is hard to estimate because robust measures for their detection are not available. Bots and detection measures co-evolve in an ongoing “arms race”.
This PhD project will develop computational methods to detect and monitor fake news and bot activity in online news and social media. The tools created will be applied to understand the prevalence and importance of fake news and bots in the digital media ecosystem, especially as they relate to public debate about political issues and election campaigns. Effective techniques are likely to combine complex network analysis, machine learning and text mining. The raw data analysed will be social media content, web pages, and relational data describing networks of interaction between news sources and social media user accounts.
This project will require a strong mathematical and computational background. The large majority of the research will focus on development of computational tools to detect, track and characterise fake news sources and automated bot accounts. Some understanding of social processes and online behaviours is necessary to help position the research within the wider context of online communications. Therefore this project also requires a willingness to engage with interdisciplinary research, for example, relevant computational work in quantitative social sciences, communications science and political science.
Entry Requirements
The project will suit a motivated student with a strong quantitative background (e.g. computer science, mathematics, physics) and an interest in how the Web is changing our society.
The majority of the studentships are available for applicants who are ordinarily resident in the UK and are classed as UK/EU for tuition fee purposes. If you have not resided in the UK for at least 3 years prior to the start of the studentship, you are not eligible for a maintenance allowance so you would need an alternative source of funding for living costs. To be eligible for fees-only funding you must be ordinarily resident in a member state of the EU.
Applicants who are classed as International for tuition fee purposes are NOT eligible for funding. International students interested in studying at the University of Exeter should search our funding database for alternative options.
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