Postgraduate research opportunities Reasons to believe: how we decide which information to trust
ApplyKey facts
- Opens: Monday 6 February 2023
- Number of places: 1
- Duration: 36 months
Overview
How do we decide what information to trust? Often this has been seen as a matter of intellectual decision-making and rationality, but we also recognise the strong emotional and social forces in decision-making. Other additional factors such as morality, credibility, persuasiveness come into play in a digital environment. How then do we decide who to believe when making life decisions?Eligibility
An upper second-class UK Honours degree or overseas equivalent in Information Science, or relevant Social Science is required. If English is not your first language, you must have an IELTS score of at least 6.5 with no component below 5.5.
Project Details
Cognitive authority has been a long-standing reason to trust information – the person who has written the information is a trusted and reliable source of information based on their expertise. Affective authority is a more recent form of authority – that the person supplying the information is doing so in an empathetic and emotionally aligned way and therefore ‘understands’ the situation requiring information. Less investigated in information science is moral authority – that the person supplying information is seen as a trustworthy source of values and guidance on how to act in a principled way. Or what about charismatic authority, Weber’s concept by which people’s authority come from their personal charisma. This dissertation will consider these, and possibly other different notions of authority that can be applied to information and contrast them and their roles in deciding who and what to believe. There are many ways in which this could be investigated depending on your preference for research.
Funding details
Please note that there is currently no funding available for this PhD position.
Prospective candidates are encouraged to explore alternative funding sources, such as scholarships, grants and fellowships. Possible sources of external funding include:
- national & international scholarship programmes
- research councils & foundations
- industry sponsorships & partnerships
We are committed to supporting applicants in their search for funding and can provide assistance with identifying and applying for external funding opportunities. Applicants are also encouraged to discuss their funding plans with their prospective supervisor to explore potential avenues for support.
For more information on potential funding sources and assistance, please visit .
While there is no funding in place for opportunities marked "unfunded", there are lots of different options to help you fund postgraduate research. Visit funding your postgraduate research for links to government grants, research councils funding and more, that could be available.
Apply
Number of places: 1
To read how we process personal data, applicants can review our 'Privacy Notice for Student Applicants and Potential Applicants' on our Privacy notices' web page.