Paid Research Assistant Positions
Description:
The University of Maryland Applied Research Lab for Intelligence and Security (ARLIS) seeks to hire student research assistants (up to 20 hours per week) to work on a project that will track misleading and harmful narratives (malinformation) related to COVID-19 vaccines and identify emotions elicited by pro- and anti-vaccine narratives commonly occurring in social and traditional media. Research assistants will engage in text annotation that will involve using a specialized tool for marking spans of text (sequence of words) as narratives. For example, narratives might relate to mask-wearing and social distancing requirements, the origin of the virus, or the effectiveness of the vaccines. Research assistants will also be asked to mark which of the provided emotions (e.g., anger, fear, sadness, gratitude) these narratives elicit in readers and in what intensity (on a scale from zero to 100). We anticipate that annotation will start in September 2021 and will continue for the Fall semester with options for continuation in Winter/Spring. Training and written guidelines will be provided, although it is expected that guidelines will require modification during the course of the annotation work.
Requirements:
• Fluent reading ability;
• Excellent English skills;
• Standard computer skills;
• Computer and internet access (to be used for remote work);
• Attention to detail;
• U.S. citizenship;
• (Preferred but not required) Previous annotation experience and/or coursework in linguistics.
· (For some, but not all annotators) Near-native or advanced proficiency in Spanish
How To Apply:
This position pays $15/hour. If interested, please send an email and your resume or CV to Ruthanna Gordon (rgordon@arlis.umd.edu) and cc: Ewa Golonka (egolonka@arlis.umd.edu) and Anton Rytting (crytting@arlis.umd.edu).
