Dr Jonathan Wheatley is part of a consortium "Preference Matcher" which is a group of academics who run online platforms which helps people decide who they should vote for at a general election. The platform does this by providing a series of questions about political issues and then identifying which party best matches your expressed preferences. Dr Wheatley is going to set up the "Who Gets My Vote" platform to be up and running for the forthcoming UK general election.
To set up the platform, Dr Wheatley requires help "coding" the manifestos of political parties, so that the questions match up to the policy commitments within the manifestos. This does not require formal coding experience, but rather looking for evidence of where each of the main political parties stands on a range of issues.
Dr Wheatley is therefore looking for 4-5 students to commit to about 20 hours each to support him in this activity. Students selected would be given training by Dr Wheatley about what was expected of them. There is uncertainty about exactly when the UK general election would be, but it is likely to be in the autumn of 2024. Therefore Dr Wheatley would require the support early September to October. In concrete terms, students selected would be given a set of policy questions about political parties (e.g. "Do they support tax cuts?") and would then need to do some internet-based research to answer them, and provide supporting evidence (e.g.manifestos or speeches etc). The students would then compare notes on their answers and have the chance to revise their answers, if they felt that someone else had provided more appropriate/accurate responses.
Students who complete this activity would contribute to the successful operation of an online platform that, in previous iterations, has helped thousands of people to decide who to vote for.
Students must be in the faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Interested students should contact Professor Michael Lister at mlister@brookes.ac.uk for further details.