Project Title: Digital surveillance after Snowden: Debates in the blogosphere Proposed Start Date: June 8 Proposed End Date: July 31 Project description Your work in this project will be focused on studying how digital surveillance has been discussed in the blogosphere following leaks provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden and published in the Guardian and elsewhere since June 2013. Snowden’s leaks have brought digital surveillance to the forefront of public debate. The research will explore how issues around public interest, and trade-offs between security and privacy rights have played out in at least 10 different blogs, representing (1) well-established news blogs (e.g. Huffington Post UK) (2) political blogs (e.g. Guido Fawkes), and (3) specialist technological blogs (e.g. Techworld). The project is closely related to the ongoing ESRC-funded “Digital Citizenship and Surveillance Society Project,” where one strand examines how surveillance debates have been covered in conventional media. As such, you will be integrated into a vibrant and active research community. The project will make a distinctive contribution to knowledge in mapping how the debate has unfolded in the frequently neglected, but increasingly influential context of the blogosphere. The research will be closely supervised by the management team. Supervision will include scheduled weekly project meetings with the team, as well as flexible meetings as necessary. The management team has extensive experience working with groups of researchers on a series of funded projects, and the first supervisor has previously worked with two CUROP students. You will benefit from the project by:  Experiencing academic team work as part of the Digital Citizenship and Surveillance Society project group  Learning how to construct and carry out framing and content analyses  Learning how to upload and analyse data using SPSS  Participating in academic journal article publications. The first supervisor has a track record of publishing with students at BA and MA levels Timeline for your research: You will be designing, piloting and carrying out a content analysis of discussion in the blogosphere around digital surveillance, looking at specific case studies following the Snowden leaks. Case studies will include blog coverage of the initial leaks, as well as subsequent related issues around digital surveillance. They will carry out the following work over the time span of the project June 8- June 19:  Conduct literature review on digital surveillance and the Snowden revelations to familiarise themselves with the conceptual framework for the project  Assist in developing, piloting and refining coding scheme and sample for content analysis of blogs June 22-July 17:  Carry out content analysis of blog sample July 20-July 31:  Enter content analysis data into SPSS database  Assist in analysis and interpretation of data Supervisors: Professor Karin Wahl-Jorgensen Second supervisor: Dr Arne Hintz The position has a start date of 8th of June and will pay a stipend of £1440. To apply, please complete and return the attached application form, along with a CV to [email protected] by 12 noon on Monday, 27th April 2015. Informal interviews have been provisionally scheduled for the first two weeks of May. This position is open to all Cardiff University undergraduate students except those graduating in 2015.