Prof Christopher Carman
No more applications being accepted
Funded PhD Project (European/UK Students Only)
About the Project
This project seeks to examine the British and American news media’s role in perpetuating myths about voter and electoral fraud in UK and US elections. The central research questions include whether news coverage is based more on fact or elite rhetoric, the role of tabloids and the partisan press in the UK relative to the US, what policies are linked to fraud (e.g., immigration), and the particular frames used by the media. The project will involve extensive data collection of coverage of recent UK elections, the 2020 US presidential election, and the 2021 Scottish Parliament election. The analysis will be carried out mainly using Quantitative Text Analysis, in particular unsupervised topic modelling and structured topic modelling. The analysis will also involve advanced count data regression modelling to assess variations in news attention to fraud. The project will be linked to a large-scale, multi-strand research project involving information environments in the UK and US surrounding voter and electoral fraud. The outputs will contribute to the planned knowledge exchange, impact, and dissemination programmes involving government officials, journalists, policy stakeholders, and public interest pieces.
The ideal candidate will have an undergraduate and/or master’s degree in politics, sociology, public policy, statistics, or related fields, a strong background in quantitative social science, and a working knowledge of R.
Funding Notes
Scholarship is open for 1+3 (1 year Masters followed by 3 year PhD), or +3 (3 years PhD only) commencing in October 2018 and depending on your eligibility for a full award, will provide:
- a stipend at the RCUK rate (2018-19 rate is £14,777 full-time / £8,866.20 part time)
- 100 % tuition fee waiver
- access to the Research Training Support Grant
- Home/EU applicants only
- First or Upper Second Class Honours (2:1) or a Master's qualification or equivalent
ESRC Eligibility Checker Tool
https://glasgow.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/esrc-award-eligibility-checker-collaborative-awards-2018