School of Languages and Cultures

Winter Research Program 2021

AVAILABLE PROJECTS

  1. Indonesia Council Open Conference: Assistant Program Organisers
  2. Converting the Mudburra dictionary into e-dictionaries
  3. How accurate is professional Mandarin/English interpreters' real-life telephone interpretation?
  4. Maidens sans frontiers – Girl Culture in Japan and Beyond
  5. Politeness strategies in Korean: Analysing spoken discourse in the socio-cultural context
  1. Sensing Australia’s Living heritage
  2. Developing and validating written and oral proficiency tests for second language Japanese
  3. Social action and meaning negotiation in discourse
  4. COVID-19 Communication by Australian governments

9. COVID-19 Communication by Australian governments

Project duration:

This is a 5 week project, which can be completed entirely under remote working arrangements, if necessary.

Description:

The Winter Research Scholar will be contributing to a collaborative research project with scholars from UQ’s School of Languages & Culture and the University of Coventry (UK), which investigates how UK, Australian and New Zealand governments communicated publicly about COVID-19 throughout 2020.

New Zealand and Australia are currently ranked as the first and eighth most effective nations in the world at managing the pandemic, while the UK comes in at 66th position (Leng et al., 2021). One factor that has contributed to these differences is the effectiveness of government directives to the public about what behaviour was needed to limit the spread of the virus.

This project uses discourse analysis to evaluate how government representatives in each country advised the public via announcements, media releases, statements and briefings. In doing so, it will also explore whether (and if so, how) government spokespersons’ gender contributed to the clarity and effectiveness of their messaging.

The Winter Research Scholar will contribute to this study by expanding the collection of government documents to be analysed, and analysing some of those documents (with supervision). Although much of this work will be routine in nature, it is critical to the success of the overall project because compiling the right documents and analysing them correctly are two of the most important steps in generating valuable research results.

Expected outcomes and deliverables:

The Winter Research Scholar will gain (or develop) skills in

  • data collection
  • the UQ Research Data Management system
  • discourse analysis
  • using NVIVO qualitative analytic software

writing a clear and effective Methods section, for publication in a scholarly journal.

Suitable for:

This project is open to applications from students with strong English language proficiency and an interest in discourse analysis.

The Winter Research Scholar must be able and willing to

  • follow instructions carefully, correctly and completely
  • complete routine tasks without losing focus
  • maintain clear and accurate records
  • manage time effectively
  • work with minimal supervision.

External organisation Involvment:

As noted above, this project involves collaboration with scholars at the University of Coventry (UK).

Primary Supervisor:

Kate Power

Further info: 

If you would like more information before applying, please contact Kate Power via email 

Please note: This project is listed under the BEL Faculty and the School of Business on the StudentHub.