Third-year communication doctoral student Matthew S. Weber has been awarded an $8,000 Web Science Research Grant by the Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University.

The grant is awarded to support interdisciplinary research and to further the aims of web science, including increasing understanding of social interactions across the World Wide Web. Grants are given to enable doctoral students to further existing research and dissertations by spending up to two months at Oxford University.

Weber is currently working on a research study examining interactions in the World Wide Web between traditional news organizations and citizen journalists. He is interested in examining how the two groups affect each other’s development over time.

“I’m happy to have the opportunity to participate in the development of Web Science as a field of research, and to represent USC Annenberg,” Weber said. “I look forward to spending time at Oxford and to engaging with scholars there to further develop my research.”

The Web Science Research Initiative is a joint endeavor between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Southampton. Grants are supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, which is the main UK government funding agency for research and training in engineering and the physical sciences.

Oxford Internet Institute
Web Science Research Initiative