PhD Student with Strong Computational Profile for the project Navigating Negativity: What is a Healthy News Diet?

Employment type: FULLTIME. The Centre for Journalism, Department of Political Science and Public Management, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, invites applications with a strong computational profile for a three-year full-time PhD scholarship in the project Navigating Negativity:

• What is a Healthy News Diet?
• (HEALTHY NEWS), with employment starting from 1 November 2026, or as soon as possible thereafter.
• The place of employment will be in Odense.
• The research project—funded by the Velux Foundation—examines when exposure to negative news informs people about important societal issues and when it negatively affects mental well-being and leads to news avoidance.

The overall aim is to identify barriers and opportunities for healthy news diets and to assess how the benefits and drawbacks of negative news can be balanced in today’s individualized media environment. The project consists of three subprojects addressing the content (SP1), consumption (SP2), and consequences (SP3) of negative news.

SP1 will analyse how the amount and character of negativity differ across news outlets, social media platforms, and individual news diets, drawing on, among other data sources, data donations from individuals and automated content analyses. SP2 will examine how people perceive and navigate negative news using in-depth interviews1 …