Do you enjoy
- Engaging in cutting-edge research as part of an interdisciplinary consortium on pressing information law questions?
- To participate in a consortium of internationally renowned scholars, and join a nationwide peer network, with many opportunities to engage and develop your career;
- Being part of a state-of-the-art prestigious programme, innovative in focus and approach, which aspires to have impact in academia as well as society;
- Benefit from a well-funded future-oriented training and development programme, including personal-professional development?
Then the job of Postdoctoral Researcher for the project 'Sharing the News' at the University of Amsterdam is perfect for you.
What are you going to doUsers of technology play a central role in how ADS affect the supply and tailoring of public information. How people interact with a for example personalized news recommendation systems or virtual assistants function directly or indirectly affect the functioning of the technology and how public values are realized through it. How do users perceive the role of technology in making news, their own role in the process (as users of algorithmically mediated services, as agents influencing algorithmic processes and active distributors of and contributors to content). The functioning and legitimacy of the media ultimately depend on the willingness of the public to trust automated processes, and the conditions that must be fulfilled to render ADS trustworthy. We need to better understand how consumers navigate the increased choice-set in selecting or avoiding (public value) news, turn to alternative sources, or develop new strategies to inform themselves (Newman et al. 2019). The central question is how ADS changing perceptions of what news, journalism, and public values are, and how these perceptions translate into individual behaviour in news consumption and sharing.
This project is part of the
Gravitation program Public Values in the Algorithmic Society (algosoc). The Gravitation programme is an initiative by the Dutch government to support excellent research in the Netherlands. The funding is reserved for scientific consortia that have the potential to rank among the world's best in their field. Algosoc is a response to the urgent need for an informed societal perspective on automated decision-making. Funded by the ministry for Education, Culture and Science for a period for 10 years, research in the algosoc programme will develop a deep understanding of the systemic changes that automated decision making entails for core public institutions, for society, and for how public values are realized. The research will focus on three sectors: justice, health and media. The programme brings together researchers in law, communication science, computer science, media studies, philosophy, public governance, STS, economy and social sciences from five Dutch universities (Amsterdam, Utrecht, Tilburg, Delft and Rotterdam). Together, the algosoc community will develop solutions for the design of governance frameworks needed to complement technology-driven initiatives in the algorithmic society.