Social Media Listening Consultant- A Community-Centered Approach to Transforming Criminality and Violence in the Niger Delta

Position description

Search for Common Ground (Search) is an international non-profit organization that promotes the peaceful transformation of conflict. With headquarters in Washington, DC and Brussels, Belgium, Search’s mission is to transform how individuals, organizations, and governments deal with conflict—moving away from destructive approaches and towards cooperative solutions. With more than 700 staff worldwide, Search implements projects in 35 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, and North America.

 

The Project

It is an18-month project funded by the European Union. The project will bring together four leading peacebuilding and development organizations in the Niger Delta, in a consortium aimed at providing a holistic, community-centered approach to addressing core drivers of criminality, violence, and conflict in the region, with a specific focus on the empowerment and inclusion of youth in the security of their respective communities in the Niger Delta. The consortium partners will leverage existing relationships with the action’s diverse target groups, including at-risk youth, local communities impacted by oil production and oil bunkering, state security actors, the private sector, journalists and media actors, key civil society organizations, and policymakers at the state, regional, national, and international levels, to secure broad-based buy-in and participation in the action.

Overall, the project will seek to initiate a shift in the way that relevant actors think about and approach issues of oil bunkering, criminality, and security in the Niger Delta in favor of more bottom-up, human-centered perspectives. This institutional and social shift is necessary in order to sustainably reduce the prevalence of oil bunkering and other forms of criminality and violence in the region in the long-term.

The design of the action centers around four activity streams, each addressing a systemic driver of division, violence, and criminality in Bayelsa, Rivers, and Delta States: 

● Stream 1 will foster intra-community collaboration around issues of social exclusion, lack of economic opportunity, and environmental degradation.

● Stream 2 will build trust and collaboration between communities and government and security actors for more participatory, community-centered security operations. 

● Stream 3 will leverage arts- and culture-based approaches to foster social cohesion between divided communities both online and offline.

● Stream 4 will facilitate policy change to institutionalize community-centered security approaches at the local, state, regional, national, and international levels.

 

Position Summary

Throughout Nigeria, social and conflict dynamics are increasingly negotiated online through conversations on social media and other online platforms leading to increased dissemination of fake news, hate speech, misinformation/miscommunication. In order to monitor, track and

analyze conversations and topics related to criminality, peace, and security, livelihood, carbon offset, artisanal refinery that resonate with the project and amongst communities, especially young people, in the Niger Delta.

 

Search will conduct regular social media listening analyses. The analyses will uncover not only the issues that are most relevant or divisive at a given time, but what groups or audiences are engaging with these issues in a constructive (or destructive) manner. Findings from these regular analyses will be compiled into reports which will be shared with the project’s peace architecture bodies to inform early warning responses, as well as with the wider consortium.

The Social Media Listening will seek to analyse and answer critical questions around emerging violent threats, harmful influencers, or dangerous narratives, and power dynamics online (including targeted harassment or threats against women and girls in particular). It will also determine the online influence of conflict entrepreneurs in the Niger Delta who are increasingly weaponizing social media as a medium for spreading hate speech and divisive messages (eg. to incite anger against the police or military). Analysis from data generated will among other things provide a better understanding of the strategies used, and elaborate effective mitigation approaches including to strengthen the

consortium’s ability to address tensions in target project communities. The reports will further inform the content and audience targeting of the project’s multimedia peace campaign, and to also provide additional context for EWER activities and peace bodies .

 

The position will be remote (depending on location) or hybrid, including periodic travels across project states for data validation with stakeholders.

 

Summary Responsibilities

The Consultant who shall be the Social Media Listening data analyst; will analyze data generated from online discussions and activities that have the potential to incite tensions, conflicts, and violence especially among young people. She/He is expected to critically identify emerging threats to peace and adequately reflect the drivers, dynamics, key actors, location, and platforms/medium in a periodic report that will be disseminated to project stakeholders.

Key Responsibilities

• • Provide strategic direction for the collection of data, triangulation, analysis and reporting format
  • Analyze conversations by utilizing advanced digital listening tools and techniques to analyze conversations, sentiment, and key influencers within relevant online communities
  • Conduct comprehensive risk assessments based on the data collected, identifying potential triggers, patterns, emerging issues that requires immediate attention and hotspots for conflict escalation
  • Translate data and insights into actionable recommendations for future peacebuilding interventions
  • Conduct platform analysis and determine toxic platforms that regularly hosts fake news, hate speech, and technology facilitated violence, etc
  • Collaborate with project teams to design targeted behavioural change messages for multimedia campaigns and community engagement activities
  • Co-Facilitate validation meetings with the Mass Media and Information management team to address findings from data collected and analyzed for collaborative response against underlying grievances and emerging threats in communities
  • Provide training and capacity-building support to the media and EWER project team on data analysis, and digital advocacy strategies
  • Provide timely reports and updates to project team

Deliverables

• NOTE: The multimedia products will be produced in batches which stems from changing dynamics and trends as recommended from analysis obtained from the social media listening activity.

   

  As job descriptions cannot be exhaustive, the position holder may be required to undertake other duties that are broadly in line with the above key duties.

  • Collate, triangulate and analyze relevant data collected online by the project media team to form quality strategic communication reports
  • Use data generated to form key behavioural change messages for targeted advocacy and multimedia campaigns
  • Provide regular and timely quality reports reflecting accurate conversations from data collected and in easily accessible formats
  • Provide technical guidance for writing the monthly digital peacebuilding report
  • Provide Capacity building for Search’s media and Digital Peacebuilding team
  • Conduct pre-validation meetings with project team
  • Attend and co-facilitate validation meetings with project stakeholders
  • Conduct platform analysis to identify relevant discussions, trends, and narratives that contribute to tensions and conflicts in communities in line with project objectives
  • Adhere to the organization’s ‘Do No Harm’ principles at all levels
  • Ensure that all requests and instructions pertaining to analysis and report production requirements are fulfilled.
  • Provide monthly data visualization in form of infographics to showcase findings across social media platforms (categorized as hate speech, misinformation, fake news,stereotype, polarization

Qualifications

• • Education
  • Bachelor’s degree or its equivalent in Communications, Journalism, Digital media, International relations, Development studies, Peace and Conflict studies, Marketing or related field; Master’s degree is a plus.

Required Experience

• • Proven experience in social media monitoring, digital platform and data analysis, or related fields, preferably within peacebuilding or conflict resolution contexts
  • Strong analytical skills with the ability to interpret complex data sets and identify actionable insights
  • Familiarity with social media listening, platforms and data visualization tools
  • Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to engage effectively with diverse stakeholders
  • Demonstrated commitment to peacebuilding, conflict prevention, and advocacy
  • Proficiency in major local Niger Delta languages relevant to the project communities is a plus
  • Ability to work independently, prioritize tasks, and meet deadlines in a fast-paced environment
  • Demonstrated experience and competency in communications for development, solutions journalism and multimedia content production relating to the conflict context of the Niger Delta region
  • Working experience within multicultural teams and international organizations or companies and knowledge of Niger Delta development and conflict issues
  • Continuously evaluate the impact of social media listening activities on project outcomes and identify lessons learned, best practices, and areas for improvement to enhance the effectiveness of future interventions

Other Requirements

• • Exceptional writing and editing skills, with the ability to gather and synthesize contributions from multiple social media sources into creative storytelling scripts for social media and other digital platforms engagement
  • Exceptional data visualization skills, using pictures, graphs, etc. to convey stories
  • Demonstrated ability to use Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint,)
  • Excellent analytic skills and ability to produce high quality written materials for different audience
  • Creative writing, editing, photography, presentation, public speaking and active listening skills;
  • Experience in commissioning, procuring, contracting, developing and producing marketing/campaign/advertising materials and products; good working knowledge of media buying will be an asset;
  • Proactive, creative, entrepreneurial and collaborative; ability to work under pressure and tight deadlines
  • A demonstrated commitment to high professional ethical standards and a diverse workplace; and
  • Ability to prioritize, plan and organize workflow to tight timeframes, handle multiple tasks, and be flexible with changing priorities.
  • Portfolio showcasing relevant previous work
  • Detailed methodology and approach for the assignment

Time frame and Place of Work

• • The Consultant is expected to commence the assignment in February 2025. The assignment is for a period of six (6) months. She/He will work remotely or in a hybrid arrangement; however will embark on occasional visits to project states as he/she is expected to participate in validation meetings and key project activities

Selection Criteria

 

Consultant proposals will be selected for:

 

1. Relevance of proposed methodology to the goal, objectives for the project

2. Quality of proposed methods, conflict sensitivity approaches, and methodology

3. Qualifications of the candidate(s)

4. Proposed budget in relation to proposed methodology, deliverables and team.

5. Timeline for proposed activities

Application instructions

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