Giovanni Schiazza, MSc
Giovanni Schiazza
Horizon CDT PhD Student
University of Nottingham, UK
Social Scientist, Meme Researcher, Artist, and Breadmaker
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Who am I?
I'm Giovanni Schiazza, a PhD researcher at the University of Nottingham with the Horizon CDT. I have a BA in Politics and International Relations and an MSc in Political Psychology. Before the PhD, my research revolved around understanding the impacts of Internet Memes on political knowledge and piloting a meme engagement scale to explore its structure in relation to individual differences.
My PhD research focuses on responsibly developing a tool to support internet meme researchers from a diverse range of disciplines and backgrounds. To ensure the value and responsibility of the tool (Meta-Meme), I employ a Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) approach to conducting science and research.
As part of RRI research, I am inviting meme experts and researchers to take part in workshops and interviews to responsibly co-create notions, concepts, and opinions on memes that will directly inform the design of the tool.
By co-producing the tool's building blocks with the interested communities, we ensure that Meta-Meme is accessible to a diverse range of researchers with different backgrounds, research approaches, and understandings of memes.
The co-production workshops will run between May and August 2024, and interviews will be available throughout 2024.
Delphi methodology will be employed during the co-production efforts to structure, collect and ensure fairness when sharing opinions and understandings of internet memes. Workshops or interviews employ Delphi methodology which involves expert selection, anonymity, generation, aggregation and evaluation of participant statements and ratings.
The findings of the PhD will help develop the proof of concept of the tool, as well as serving as an RRI case study from which to draw guidelines for other researchers wishing to employ RRI in their research and innovation processes.
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Education
2016-2019, Bachelor of Arts
2019-2020,
Master of Science
2020-today, Doctorate of Philosophy
First Class Degree in Politics and International Relations
University of Nottingham
Erasmus+ exchange in Sciences Po University, Paris
Undergraduate dissertation on Political Internet Memes and Political Learning: an experimental study
MSc in Political Psychology, Merit
Dissertation on developing a novel Internet Meme Engagement Scale
Social Psychology, Political Psychology, year-long Statistics module
PhD in Digital Economy, fully funded scholarship Horizon CDT
Meta-Meme: a researcher's tool for the analysis of Internet Memes
Work experience
2017, Political Science Intern
2021, Research Assistanships
2023-2024, Chief Scientific Advisor Secondement Intership
Political Science intern, Centre for African Studies (Piedmont, Turin)
I helped them to recategorize and reorder their library, found a software to best suit their needs and proceeded into transposing their book additions (3 years’ worth) into the new system – around 500 books. Furthermore, I proceeded into retrieving their previous catalogue – believed to be lost forever.
Research assistantship with two projects.
Adaptive Interactive Media, work package lead and grant writing.
Covid-19 discourses, statistical analysis.
Secondment under the Chief Scientific Advisor to Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport
Publications
2015 Germany Junior 7 Action Plan
2019, UK, Blogpost
2023, Full Workshop Proceeding
Position paper for J7 summit 2015, Resource Efficiency
Blogpost, part of Globalisation and Resistance module in undergraduate
PhoMemes Workshop, ICWSM-22 AAAI Conference.
Schiazza, G. (2022). Political Internet Memes and Political Learning: an Experimental Approach. In ICWSM PhoMemes Workshops. Full Text
2023, Full Journal Article
Statistical analysis for representative sample dataset.
McClaughlin, E., Vilar-Lluch, S., Parnell, T., Knight, D., Nichele, E., Adolphs, S., ... & Schiazza, G. (2023). The reception of public health messages during the COVID-19 pandemic. Applied Corpus Linguistics, 3(1), 100037. Full Text
2023 Extended Journal Abstract
Meme engagement scale, extended abstract for Digital Footprint conference. Schiazza, G. (2023). Measuring Internet Meme engagement and individual differences: a novel scale and its correlates. International Journal of Population Data Science, 8(3). Full Text
2023, Extended Journal Abstract
Adaptive Interactive Movies, extended abstract for Digital Footprint conference
Parkes, J., Schiazza, G., Martindale, S., Ramchurn, R., Smith, A., & Benford, S. (2023). Digital Footprints in the Video Stream: Survey study of reflections on digital traces of media consumption and potential to use this for insights into well-being. International Journal of Population Data Science, 8(3). Full Text
Awards and Funding
Below a list of Awards and Funding grants
SPIR UG fund
£550 to recruit and award payments to study participants on Prolific.co
PhD Scholarship
Horizon CDT scholarship
2020 Cohort
Adaptive Interactive Movies
Survey design and grant writing
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Horizon international grant
For conference presentation in Atlanta for ICWSM 2022