Join CITAP: Call for 2022-23 affiliate community!

The Center for Information, Technology, & Public Life (CITAP) is accepting applications for research affiliates for the 2022-2023 academic year. The affiliate program allows CITAP to support and promote excellent research that’s aligned with our own research topics and values, and we welcome affiliates (including faculty, postdoctoral researchers, and graduate students) from a broad range of academic and research institutions, especially in North Carolina.

About CITAP

We’re dedicated to understanding the growing impact of the internet, social media, and other forms of digital information sharing in the context of the people who design, use, and govern them. CITAP explores technology as it’s embedded in societies structured by economics, race, politics, culture, and more.

We recognize that effective analysis of technology platforms and information systems requires

  • A holistic approach grounded in history, society, culture, and politics
  • Analyzing how social differences—including race and ethnicity, gender, class, and sexual identity—shape unequal information ecosystem dynamics
  • Prioritizing questions of power, institutions, and economic, social, cultural, and technological structures
  • Making clear foundational commitments to equality and justice

Common themes found in our work include:

  • Political processes: Technological tools increasingly interact with our political systems and changes how society thinks about politics.
  • Democracy and equality: The rise of digital communication simultaneously poses threats and offers promise to democracies worldwide.
  • Mis- and disinformation: False and low-quality information sources generate revenue and power for their creators while undermining public trust.
  • Platforms, networks, and infrastructure: There is a growing awareness of the relationship between communication technologies and the power dynamics that shape society.

Being a CITAP Affiliate

The CITAP affiliate program brings together students and researchers whose work aligns with our own. Our faculty researchers, graduate research assistants, and affiliates make up a community of scholarship, offering a space to workshop and develop new research, connect with potential collaborators and follow work happening in other disciplines, and a network to promote new research.

An affiliate membership with CITAP includes:

  • Invitations to participate in CITAP events, including monthly research workshops and professional development talks and meetings with CITAP-hosted visiting speakers
  • Access to an affiliate email list and discussion forum
  • Use of CITAP’s coworking space in Manning Hall
  • A listing on the CITAP website
  • Opportunities to collaborate with other researchers through informal working groups, affiliate-organized sessions, and other ad hoc spaces in addition to our regular programming
  • Promotion of your own work through CITAP’s newsletter, social media, and web site

The success of the affiliate program depends on active participation from affiliates. Whether it’s in offering feedback in our research workshops, co-organizing a working group on a specific topic, or participating in our professional development sessions to support students and junior researchers as they enter into public scholarship, we ask that all affiliates consider both what they plan to ask of the affiliate community and what they’re most able to offer.

As a baseline, we expect that active participation in the CITAP affiliate program requires a commitment of 1-2 hours per month.

How to Apply

At CITAP, we value working collaboratively. Our goal is to bring together a diverse and engaged community working on related topics with a shared approach, and we err toward inclusiveness in inviting new affiliates. We look forward to getting to know you and your work through this short process.

To apply, please fill out our short application form.

Please contact Kathryn Peters at kep@unc.edu with any questions.

 


Call for Faculty Research Fellow

CITAP is seeking a Faculty Research Fellow to start in Summer 2022 and serve for one academic year. The fellowship is restricted to University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill faculty. The Faculty Research Fellow will receive $15,000 in research funds and will be expected to attend CITAP events and give a public presentation of their work at the end of the fellowship.

The successful applicant will join a vibrant research community anchored by CITAP’s four principal researchers—Deen Freelon (Hussman School of Journalism and Media), Daniel Kreiss (Hussman), Alice Marwick (Dept. of Communication), and Zeynep Tufekci (School of Information and Library Sciences), our three Senior Faculty Researchers, Tressie McMillan Cottom (SILS), Shannon McGregor (Hussman), and Francesca Tripodi (SILS), and a larger affiliate community of faculty and graduate students working on related topics.

To apply, please email a one-page proposed research project that complements CITAP’s research topics and approach, along with a CV, to citap@unc.edu with subject line "Faculty Research Fellowship" by May 27.