[Air-L] postdoc at Michigan, ICPSR re: social media data archiving

[Libby Hemphill]

Hi all,

Please forward widely and encourage people you know to apply!

https://careers.umich.edu/job_detail/213553/postdoctoral-research-fellow

The University of Michigan School of Information seeks to hire a
postdoctoral scholar to conduct research in the area of social media data
archiving.

This is a one-year appointment renewable up to two years, pending continued
funding, availability of work, and satisfactory job performance.  This
position is estimated to begin in late summer/early fall, with some
flexibility to start date depending on the selected candidate.

This scholar will work with Dr. Libby Hemphill <http://www.libbyh.com/> at
the University of Michigan School of Information and the Inter-university
Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) on research projects
related to technical infrastructure, collection development policies, and
data provision policies for archives of social media data. Results from
this project will inform the development of the Social Media Archive
(SOMAR) at ICPSR. SOMAR will become the first data resource of its
kind—making social media data accessible to researchers who lack the
technical or computing resources to capture data independently and enabling
researchers to share and access data from social media while respecting
platforms’ terms of service and users’ privacy expectations.

In this project, we will leverage existing social media datasets at MIDAS
<https://midas.umich.edu/> and ICPSR <http://icpsr.umich.edu/> to
experiment with archival infrastructures that make social media data
findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR). We will also
explore other principles for data archives, such as the Feminist Data
Manifest-No <https://www.manifestno.com/> and The CARE Principles for
Indigenous Data Governance <https://www.gida-global.org/care>, that are
informed by feminist and Indigenous research and scholars. The postdoc will
work with Hemphill, her students, and staff at ICPSR to develop collection
development policies, survey social media users and researchers to
understand participant perceptions and preferences, and conduct field
experiments to evaluate data indexing and access systems. Key work elements
include: collecting and managing large datasets from social media
platforms; writing academic papers and grant proposals; and collaborating
with multidisciplinary teams on research projects.

The candidate may be responsible for supervising doctoral, masters, and
undergraduate students in various research activities.

Required Qualifications*


   - A PhD in information, library or archival science, computational
   social science, or a related discipline
   - Expertise in using Python for collecting and analyzing data from
   social media
   - Experience generating metadata and documentation for research data and
   code

Desired Qualifications*


   - Experience working alongside, partnering with, and building strong
   connections with  research team members;
   - Experience conducting independent and collaborative research;
   - Experience writing and presenting research in professional settings,
   such as conferences and academic journals;
   - Administrative skills like scheduling, prompt email communications
   with all partners, routine check-ins, keeping team members and partners up
   to date on progress, monitoring and shifting project priorities as needed;
   - Experience with one or more of the following: ElasticSearch, Spark,
   Hadoop, SOLR

Take care,
Libby
--
Libby Hemphill
pronouns: she/her/hers
Director, Resource Center for Minority Data
<http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/RCMD>, ICPSR
<http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/>
Research Associate Professor, Institute for Social Research
<http://home.isr.umich.edu/>
Associate Director, Center for Social Media Responsibility
<http://csmr.umich.edu/>
Associate Professor, School of Information <https://www.si.umich.edu/>
University of Michigan