The Department of Media and Journalism Studies within the School of Communication and Culture at Aarhus University invites applications for a postdoctoral position with a focus on journalism studies and civic engagement. The postdoc position is central to the research project ‘Journalism for Civic Communication in Urban Spaces’, funded by the Aarhus University Research Foundation (AUFF), and will be led by Christoph Raetzsch, Associate Professor of Journalism Studies and Digital Methods.
This is a full-time, fixed-term postdoc position lasting two years and starting on 1 September 2021 or as soon as possible thereafter.
The School of Communication and Culture is committed to diversity and encourages all qualified applicants to apply regardless of their personal background.
Project
The two-year project addresses a gap between journalism studies and smart city research, taking the datafication of urban spaces as an opportunity for journalism to go beyond the “informed citizen” model of its audience. The aim of the project is first to map and evaluate in an internationally comparative perspective how journalists, citizens, cities, data providers and civic tech NGOs currently work together on a local level in three different national and urban contexts. The analysis will identify links to existing urban innovation approaches such as living labs or co-creation methodologies, to identify and develop professional journalistic practices and collaboration models in Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany. To this end, the project team will collaborate closely with local partners in academia and media start-ups, as well as traditional news media and civic tech NGOs. The project team will also collaborate closely with a number of research centres at Aarhus University, including DITCOM (Centre for Digital Transformation in Cities and Communities), DATALAB (Centre for Digital Social Research,) and Netlab. The working language of the project team is English. For additional details, please see the project announcement.
Postdoc profile
We are looking for applicants who are interested in participating in and developing an emerging and interdisciplinary field of research and practice at an international level. Applicants should have a good command of current debates in the designated research fields, or make a convincing argument on how to identify and develop synergies between them. Applicants should also be able to identify and develop collaborations between different stakeholders such as journalists, activists, city representatives and citizens. We thus expect a high ambition to embed research activities in existing innovation efforts at the local level. Since the team will consist initially of only the PI and the postdoc, good communication skills, a reliable work ethic and an international orientation are important. Ideally, applicants should have a good command of English at an academic level, and strong written and oral language skills in Danish, Dutch and/or German.
The successful applicant will be expected to
- identify relevant actors and projects in Europe in the domains of data-driven civic innovation, data journalism and urban platforms
- gather and evaluate existing innovation methodologies (e.g. living labs, fab labs, co-creation toolkits)
- develop collaborations with civic tech start-ups and journalism and media organisations, including the organisation of up to two workshops during the project
- document the research process in scholarly and other public communication formats
- be involved with planning, managing and implementing the timely delivery of work package results
Deadline:15 March 2021
RéFDocSIC - Réseau Francilien des Doctorant.e.s et Docteur.e.s en Sciences de l'Information et de la Communication 