Two months ago Emilie Francis arrived in Sweden. She is one of the newest PhD students at Språkbanken Text, Gothenburg University. Originally from Victoria, Canada, she likes Gothenburg, which she thinks is very similar to her home town.
“Emi”, as she likes to be called, was looking for a job related to NLP and data.
– I was not specifically looking for a PhD position this time, but I have been before. After another job opportunity fell through due to the COVID pandemic, I came across this position and applied.
What research are you going to do?
– I am going to study language in the media and bias, misinformation and the impact on politics and society. Being younger, I hear people talk about social media and all the scandals the algorithms are promoting. But have the radicals become more vocal? And has the activation of people and their participation in social media made people become more divisive on a lot of topics? My theory is that social media has made the gap wider.
Right now Emilie Francis is looking into current research on bias and factuality in media, and how certain organizations judge different publications.
– My current objective is to study the frameworks they use and see if it is applicable at a document level.
And on your computer screen right now?
– I am designing a statistics course for PhD students at Språkbanken Text.
She also has a dog called Nagi.
– He is an Akita Inu. He is 2 years old and has a lot of energy!
