PhD Scholarship: Public opinion and discourse within our digital society’s systems

PhD Scholarship: AI for mining, understanding and augmenting public opinion and public discourse

College / Management Unit: College of Science
School / Unit / Institute: Computer Science
Post Title: PhD
Post Duration: 4 years
Reports to / Principal Investigator: Dr. Przemyslaw Grabowicz ((opens in a new window)przemek.grabowicz@ucd.ie)

Research Area:
Public opinion and public discourse are a cornerstone of decision-making in democratic societies. This PhD project will develop AI and statistical methods to mine, understand and augment public opinion and public discourse. To mine public opinion and public discourse, the PhD candidate will innovate AI-based systems for extracting representative signals about the public from millions of social media and news media data points. Such estimates tend to be more accurate than traditional polls, e.g., before the 2024 U.S. presidential election we (opens in a new window)forecast with groundbreaking low, 1% error, popular support for the candidates by correcting biases in thousands of election polls published on X (see (opens in a new window)socialpolls.org). To deepen our understanding of public opinion and public discourse, the PhD candidate will study social media and AI systems that influence the public, while helping to identify (opens in a new window)misinformation, bias, and polarization. For instance, our (opens in a new window)research of political biases on the social media platform X before the 2025 German federal election was (opens in a new window)broadcasted by the German public TV channel ZDF during the election week. To augment public opinion formation and public discourse, the PhD candidate will pioneer fair and explainable AI systems that address biases and misinformation by aiming for representativeness. The research will involve development and deployment of AI-based systems analyzing millions of news articles, social media posts and users. This research will span the areas of data science, natural language processing, responsible and explainable AI, computational social science, and social computing. The project involves collaborations with world-class researchers from the U.S. and Europe. The PhD candidate will contribute to making our AI systems and digital media of tomorrow accountable, representative, explainable, and ready to interact with our open world for public good.

Location
The PhD candidate will be based in UCD’s School of Computer Science. Hybrid working arrangements are possible.

Scholarship
The scholarship value is about €114,000 and includes a 4-year tax-free stipend (€22,000 annually), registration fee, a travel budget for international travel to conferences (€3,000) and a new computer. In addition, all doctoral candidates will do some demonstration and/or teaching assistant hours in the School as part of their career development (typically only 6 hours per week). These teaching activities are also an additional source of income for PhD candidates and can significantly complement the offered stipend.

Mandatory Criteria

• BSc degree in Computer Science or similar discipline
• Excellent programming skills
• Excellent English communication skills. Non-native English speakers should have an IELTS with a minimum total score of 6.5 (with at least 6 in all components) or equivalent (further details on equivalence of tests are available here). There is no IELTS requirement for non-native English speakers who have graduated from a degree in Ireland or in English.

Selection Criteria

• MSc degree in Computer Science or similar discipline
• Research and/or industry experience commensurate with the stage of your career
• Excellent quantitative research skills
• Self-motivation and research interests
• Expertise in programming in Python
• Experience in Machine Learning and/or Statistics
• Experience in Computational Social Science and/or Social Computing
• Excellent written and oral communication and interpersonal skills

How to Apply

Candidates can apply via (opens in a new window)this Google Form, attaching a PDF file with CV, cover letter or a personal statement (detailing interest and experience in the relevant research areas, and including contact details of two referees), and academic transcripts by April 10 for full consideration. Shortlisted candidates will be contacted for an interview in March or early April.