For a national research project funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), within the Informed Citizen program, we are looking for two PhD Researchers (one for Tilburg University and one for the Meertens Institute): “Better informing citizens about current debates — Moderating and Summarizing Online Discussions”.

About this vacancy
This 4-year project aims to develop and evaluate digital tools for improving the quality of online discussions about current debates (ranging from, for example, COVID-19 to black pete and climate change), in order to better inform citizens. In particular, we will (1) analyze discussions in separate domains and at several points in time, and develop computer-assisted moderation models that are optimally catered to the needs of human discussion moderators, (2) develop automatic forum summarization techniques that can distinguish between different viewpoints and arguments put forward in a discussion, (3) develop interactive visualizations of the generated summaries, with an overview of the topics and viewpoints, to facilitate exploration of debates.

“Better informing citizens about current debates” is an interdisciplinary project of the Tilburg center for Cognition and Communication and the KNAW Meertens Institute, in close collaboration with nu.nl (DPG Media). 

Background
Healthy deliberation is potentially helpful for enhancing social cohesion and mutual understanding in society, by learning about other viewpoints and developing new ones. Through digital connectivity, people with diverse backgrounds can find each other on comment sections in news platforms and possibly engage in constructive and inclusive debate. Yet, this potential of inclusive deliberation has not been realized to date. While news platforms manage to block the bulk of uncivil posts and highlight the most constructive ones, typically by means of a fusion between automated filtering (by machine learning) and intensive human moderation, the current practice lacks a transparent moderation for complex discussion topics and does not give equal attention to minority viewpoints due to the sheer volume of other messages. To address these shortcomings, and move forward to the potential of inclusive deliberation, we propose to develop a tool that summarizes any set of comments posted in the context of news reports, by highlighting the topic and degree of constructiveness of single posts, and by visualizing the output in a manner that invites visitors into discussion and informs them with a heterogeneous overview of the topics and viewpoints that have been shared. This project will provide novel insights into computer-assisted forum moderation by bringing together a multidisciplinary team of researchers, moderators and media-stakeholders and studying the postulations of particular discussion topics. 

Two PhD researchers will be hired on this project, one at each of the participating institute. PhD1 (at the KNAW Meertens Institute) will concentrate on getting a better understanding of (automatic) moderation of online discussions, while PhD2 (at Tilburg University) will work on automatic summarization and visualization of discussions. Although the PhD candidates will work on related but different sub-projects, a close collaboration between the PhD candidates is important for successful completion of the project. 
A full description of the project is available upon request.
 

PhD1 Understanding of (automatic) moderation of online discussions
Location: KNAW Meertens Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Supervisors: Prof. dr. Antal van den Bosch & Dr. Ernst van den Hemel

Candidates for this position should have a (research) master’s degree in artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, computational linguistics, cognitive science, or comparable. In addition, you:

• have strong computational skills, and an affinity with language technology;
• have experience with (experimental) evaluation and statistical analyses; 
• have excellent English witten and oral communication skills;
• are collaborative and like to work in a team;  
• speaking Dutch is a plus.

PhD2 Automatic summarization and visualization of discussions
Location: Tilburg center for Cognition and Communication, Tilburg University, The Netherlands
Supervisors: Prof. dr. Emiel Krahmer & Dr. Florian Kunneman (VU)

Candidates for this position should have a (research) master’s degree in computational linguistics, data science, artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, cognitive science, or comparable. In addition, you:

• have strong computational skills, and an affinity with language technology and data visualization,
• have experience with (experimental) evaluation and statistical analyses; 
• have excellent English witten and oral communication skills;
• are collaborative and like to work in a team;  
• speaking Dutch is a plus.
   

Appointment
The appointment at the Meertens Institute concerns an employment contract of 1,0 FTEs for a period of one year with a view to an extension of up to 4 years. 
Both PhD projects are expected to start around September 1, 2020, but the exact starting date is negotiable.

Terms of employment
The gross monthly salary is € 2.325,-- per month in the first year, rising to € 2.972,-- in the fourth year, based on a fulltime appointment. The salary is supplemented with an 8% holiday allowance and an 8.3% end-of-year bonus. The Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities is applicable.

The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences offers an attractive pension scheme, 6 weeks of holiday per year, the possibility to buy or sell holiday leave, as well as career development opportunities. Flexible hours and working from home are negotiable.  
 

Meertens Institute

The Meertens Institute is an Academy research institute. It studies and documents the Dutch language and Dutch culture, focusing mainly in the phenomena that shape everyday life in our society. The institute’s collections are a key component of the Netherlands’ humanities research infrastructure.