Position: Student Programmer
Center: Datalab – Center for Digital Social Research, School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University
Hours: Flexible, part-time, approximately 7 hours per week
Start: 01.08.26 or as soon as possible after
Location: Aarhus University / Datalab, with flexible arrangements possible

Datalab is looking for a student programmer to contribute to the Social Media Influence project. The project investigates how digital platforms shape information exposure, attention, and public life, with a particular focus on YouTube use in Denmark.

The position is especially connected to Datalab’s analysis of large-scale YouTube data, including donated user histories, video metadata, search behavior, subscriptions, comments, transcripts, and other platform data. The work combines computational social science, communication research, data analysis, and responsible handling of complex digital trace data.

Tasks

Depending on your skills and interests, you may contribute to:

• Cleaning, structuring, and documenting large-scale platform datasets.
• Writing and testing Python scripts for data processing and analysis.
• Supporting statistical analyses and descriptive reporting.
• Working with text data, metadata, and embeddings.
• Assisting with machine-learning or NLP-based workflows.
• Creating reproducible code, documentation, and validation checks.
• Collaborating with researchers on methodological questions related to digital platform research.

Qualifications

We are looking for a student with an interest in one or more of the following areas:

• Python programming.
• Data analysis and statistics.
• Large-scale data handling.
• Machine learning or deep learning.
• Natural language processing.
• Computational social science, media research, or platform studies.

You do not need to be an expert in all of these areas. More important is that you are meticulous, curious, willing to learn, and interested in working on research questions involving digital media and society.

Experience with tools such as Python, pandas, Git/GitHub, Jupyter, R, SQL, or command-line workflows is an advantage, but not a strict requirement.

What We Offer

• The opportunity to work on a major research project about social media influence and digital platforms.
• Experience with real-world computational social science research.
• A supportive interdisciplinary research environment.
• Flexible working hours compatible with your studies.
• The chance to develop programming, data analysis, and research skills.
• Collaboration with researchers from media studies, political science, cognitive science, and related fields.

How to Apply

Please contact Professor Anja Bechmann at anjabechmann@cc.au.dk with a brief informal summary of your interests, motivation, and relevant experience.

For questions about the position, you are also welcome to contact David Wegmann, PhD Student, at david.wegmann@cc.au.dk.

Datalab is committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace. We encourage applications from students of all backgrounds.