The NYU Center for Social Media, AI, and Politics (CSMAP) is looking for a Postdoctoral Research Associate to work on research examining the intersection of AI, the digital information environment and politics. We are interested in both the substantive impact of AI on the digital information environment and politics as well as innovative uses of AI to study politics.
Approximately 80% of the applicant’s time will be devoted to joint work on CSMAP projects, and 20% will be available for pursuing their own research. The work on CSMAP projects will include ongoing projects at the Center, new projects proposed by the Center’s academic directors, and new projects proposed by the applicant.
The NYU Center for Social Media, AI, and Politics studies the intersection of the digital information environment and politics, and develops new and innovative ways to study these phenomena. Postdocs work on projects with diverse methodologies and substantive motivations. CSMAP’s AI related research focuses on three overarching areas: understanding the political implication of human/AI interactions, especially as it pertains to use of LLMs and Chatbots; auditing AI systems to measure potential political biases and their downstream consequences; and methodological research on applications of AI for social scientific research.
Your research will take place in a lab-based environment and will be supported by a team that includes research engineers, operations staff, and student research assistants. CSMAP consists of four core faculty members, as well as research professors, research scientists, PhD students in both Political Science and Data Science, affiliated faculty both at NYU and other institutions, and undergraduates. The lab maintains a broad research agenda with many projects moving forward simultaneously. Among other things, CSMAP maintains a panel survey of US respondents covering 2016-2024 that includes substantial connected digital trace data – including behavior on Twitter/X, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and web-browsing history of many of the respondents that you will have access to for lab projects.
This is initially a one-year position, with the potential for renewal up to three years.
Review of applications will begin on July 31, 2026. If you already possess a doctoral degree at the time of hiring, you will be hired as a Postdoctoral Associate. If you do not (i.e., you will be defending during your first year at CSMAP), you will be initially hired as a Researcher and then will be transitioned to a Postdoctoral Associate upon completion.
The ideal start date for this position is September 1, 2026, or as soon as possible thereafter. A start date of January 1, 2027 is possible.
Feel free to contact us for more information: Jonathan Nagler (jonathan.nagler@nyu.edu) or Joshua Tucker (joshua.tucker@nyu.edu).
More information on the Center can be found at csmapnyu.org.
We are looking for candidates with a PhD — or soon to be defending — in Political Science, a related social science field, Data Science, or Computer Science. The candidate should be interested in the study of the digital information environment and politics, have excellent quantitative skills, and experience working with text as data, network analysis, experiments, large language models and generative AI, and/or causal inference.
Please be sure to include up to 3 academic references in your application along with your C.V., a research paper, a statement of your research focus and work to date, and a cover letter explaining your interest in the position. Please note your preferred start date in your cover letter.
In compliance with NYC’s Pay Transparency Act, the annual base salary range for this position is $80,000 - $85,000. New York University considers factors such as (but not limited to) the experience of the candidates and the terms of the research grant when extending an offer.
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