Netherlands PhD Position 2009/2010 Surfing the information waves-Eindhoven University of Technology

The Eindhoven University of Technology has the following vacancy

PhD student on the project "Surfing the information waves: Finding, revealing, and evaluating information online" at the School of Innovation Sciences.

Job description
The Ph.D. student is expected to do research leading to a Ph.D. thesis in the project "Surfing the information waves: Finding, revealing, and evaluating information online". At the core of this project lies the question how people deal with the reliability of information on the Internet, to what extent the formal and informal mechanisms that facilitate reliable exchange of information offline have online equivalents, and to what extent new online mechanisms and tools are and can be developed to facilitate reliable information exchange.

Typical questions of interest are: How do people discern useful and reliable information from
useless and unreliable information in online settings? How can users be motivated to provide
reliable information and how can the provision of unreliable information be minimized? To
what extent do the answers to these questions depend on the kind of online setting? For the
project we anticipate doing research in several areas of application, such as medical
information sites and groups, social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Plaxo,
Xing, etc), and general economic and consumer sites, such as eBay, Amazon.

Requirements
The candidate should have a Masters degree (or equivalent) in the social sciences
(sociology, psychology, political or communication science), excellent knowledge and skills in
quantitative methods of data analysis, and familiarity with new forms of online
communication. Most of all, we are looking for someone with a natural curiosity with respect
to online interaction of any kind. Knowledge about theories pertaining to the topic in (social)
psychology or sociology would be an additional asset. The candidate should be proficient in
English (speaking and writing).

Organization
The candidate will work at the school of Innovation Sciences at the Department of
Technology Management at Eindhoven University of Technology (NL), at the Chair of
Sociology of Technology and Innovation. Research interests in and around that chair
generally include the way in which humans interact with technology and how that interaction
can be improved, both from the user-level as from the level of policy- making. Additional
information can be found at:

http://www.tue-tm.org/snijders/PhD/

Conditions of employment
We offer a (full-time) Ph.D. position for 4 years. Gross salaries are in the range of EUR 28K
gross per annum in the first year and EUR 35K during the fourth year and include attractive
benefits (e.g. technical infrastructure, child care, sports facilities). A small teaching load can
be part of the job.



Application
Send your application or requests for further information by email to Prof. dr. C. Snijders (c.c.p.snijders `at´ tue.nl). The application should consist of a motivation for your application, and extended curriculum vitae, a description of your obtained scientific degree, and a list of courses and the grades you obtained for those courses.