This is a one month, remote, hourly paid contract starting 15 September 2026.
Oxford Brookes University is seeking a part-time Postgraduate Research Assistant to support the BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grant-funded project “Disputed Facts: Fact-Checking Immigration Claims in an Era of Polarized Knowledge.”
The project examines how fact-checking organisations in the United Kingdom, United States, and Australia evaluate immigration-related claims, construct categories of truth and falsity, and communicate epistemic authority in a polarized digital media environment. It focuses on three fact-checking organisations: Full Fact in the UK, PolitiFact in the US, and AAP Fact Check in Australia. The project combines lexicometric analysis, qualitative content and discourse analysis, and semi-structured interviews with fact-checking staff.
The successful candidate will help collect, prepare, organise, and analyse a corpus of immigration-related fact-checks published between 2020 and 2024. They will support the development of a structured dataset and master metadata file, contribute to text preparation and analysis in R, and assist with qualitative research tasks including content analysis, discourse analysis, and interview data management. The role offers an opportunity to develop applied skills in computational text analysis, corpus management, mixed-methods research, and research on misinformation, migration, journalism, and epistemic authority.
Key responsibilities
The Research Assistant will:
- collect and organise immigration-related fact-checks from Full Fact, PolitiFact, and AAP Fact Check;
- prepare and clean textual data, including headlines, verdict statements, article bodies, publication dates, source information, verdict categories, and topic classifications;
- support the creation of a master metadata file with consistent identifiers and variable names;
- help harmonise verdict categories across different fact-checking organisations while preserving original labels;
- contribute to lexicometric analysis using R and relevant open-source text-analysis packages;
- assist with frequency analysis, keyness testing, collocation/co-occurrence analysis, keyword-in-context analysis, and correspondence analysis, where appropriate;
- support qualitative content and discourse analysis of fact-checking texts;
- help identify recurring framings, rhetorical strategies, evidentiary practices, and ways of constructing truth, falsity, authority, and credibility;
- assist with interview-related research tasks, including preparation, transcript organisation, anonymisation, and data management;
- conduct targeted literature searches on fact-checking, misinformation, immigration discourse, digital media, lexicometric analysis, content analysis, and discourse analysis;
- attend online project meetings and provide clear updates on progress;
- ensure research data are handled accurately, securely, and in accordance with University ethics and data-management requirements.
About you
You will be undertaking postgraduate study, or hold a postgraduate qualification, in a relevant field such as geography, politics, sociology, communication/media studies, linguistics, migration studies, digital methods, journalism studies, or a related discipline.
You should have experience working carefully with textual data and an interest in one or more of the following areas: misinformation, immigration, fact-checking, journalism, digital media, political communication, discourse analysis, or public knowledge.
You will need strong organisational skills, attention to detail, and the ability to work independently with appropriate supervision. The role will involve careful data collection, cleaning, documentation, and analysis, so reliability and accuracy are especially important.
Essential criteria
Applicants should have:
- postgraduate-level study or training in a relevant discipline;
- experience with qualitative or quantitative text analysis, corpus construction, discourse analysis, content analysis, digital media research, or mixed-methods social research;
- ability to organise, clean, and document textual data accurately;
- good digital literacy, including confidence using spreadsheets or equivalent tools for structured data management;
- strong attention to detail;
- good organisational and time-management skills;
- ability to work independently and communicate progress clearly;
- willingness to learn project-specific data collection and analysis workflows.
Desirable criteria
The following would be advantageous, but are not all required:
- experience using R for text analysis;
- familiarity with packages such as quanteda, tidytext, tidyverse, or similar tools;
- experience with tokenisation, lemmatisation, frequency analysis, keyness testing, collocation/co-occurrence analysis, keyword-in-context analysis, or correspondence analysis;
- experience using NVivo or similar qualitative analysis software;
- familiarity with qualitative content analysis, discourse analysis, or semi-structured interview methods;
- experience with misinformation, fact-checking, migration/immigration discourse, journalism studies, or digital media research;
- experience working remotely as part of a research team.
What the role offers
This role provides an opportunity to contribute to a funded research project on a timely and politically significant topic. The successful candidate will gain experience in corpus construction, computational text analysis, qualitative analysis, and mixed-methods research design. They will also develop familiarity with research workflows linking R-based lexicometric analysis and NVivo-supported qualitative analysis, as outlined in the project methodology.
This role does not meet the minimum salary threshold required for Skilled Worker visa sponsorship under the UK points-based immigration system. Therefore, we are unable to offer sponsorship for this position.
As a Disability Confident Employer we guarantee to interview any disabled applicant who meets the essential selection criteria.
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