KITLV is looking for a new intern to support the research project ‘Cyber troops and computational propaganda in Southeast Asia: A comparative study of public opinion manipulation’.

The project studies comparatively how social media-based public opinion manipulation is organized in Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia. More specifically, it uses a multi-method approach, combining social media analysis, digital ethnography, and fieldwork, to study the organization and operations of cyber troops, understood as networks of secretly paid actors using anonymous social media accounts to engage in coordinated campaigns to manipulate public opinion. The project is a unique interdisciplinary collaboration involving Dutch and Southeast Asian researchers from humanities, social sciences and computational sciences.

The intern will support this project by:
1. Assist in cleaning, contextualizing and interpreting the Indonesian social media data
2. Assist in coding, analyzing and interpreting the Indonesian fieldwork data
3. Assist in analyzing and interpreting data for the digital ethnography
4. Assist to produce reports to disseminate the findings of the project
5. Assist in organizing events related to the project
6. Transcribing Indonesian interviews

Requirements
• Speaks and reads Indonesian.
• Familiar with Indonesian politics
• MA student, preferably in social sciences or a related field. The student must be part of a study program. The internship cannot be organized on outside of an educational institution.

Internship period
The internship will take place at KITLV from approx. 1 April to 31 July for three days per week (credits may be earned in consultation with the student’s university).

KITLV offers:
• The opportunity to gain working experience at an internationally renowned research institute;
• The opportunity to expand your academic network and to work in an interdisciplinary research team
• A remuneration of EUR 240 euro gross per month (based on a 3 day workweek)*
• A reimbursement of travel expenses according to the KNAW regulations if the student is not entitled to a DUO student travel product

*With a workweek of 38 hours, interns are entitled to accrue 2.5 days off per month. This is adjusted proportionally for part-time internships. Interns do not accrue towards a holiday allowance or year-end bonus.

More information
For more information, please contact Ward Berenschot: [email protected]
For more information on the project, click here.

Deadline
Please send 1) an application, outlining your motivation, and 2) a short writing sample (e.g. an essay written in the course of your studies) to Ward Berenschot ([email protected]) before March 4 23:59, 2024.