[Air-L] JOB: Consultant- Social Media Impact Assessment

[Joly MacFie]

https://recruiting.ultipro.com/NAT1051NDEM/JobBoard/79dbb2b6-6a4f-4628-a401-e37889b022fc/OpportunityDetail

Beginning in late 2022 and throughout 2023 and 2024, the tech industry
imposed significant budget cuts and workforce reductions, in some cases in
response to economic uncertainty, and in others as a result of fundamental
mission and value shifts by executive leadership. Teams working on trust
and safety, policy, content moderation, and ethics were particularly hard
hit: X disbanded its ethical artificial intelligence and election integrity
teams, Google cut approximately one third of its team dedicated to
addressing information manipulation and censorship, and Meta eliminated
thousands of positions with an outsized impact on its trust and safety
teams. Simultaneously, social media companies began restricting access to
data used by researchers to assess threats to information space. X, for
example, imposed exorbitant fees to access its API and Meta announced plans
to shut down its widely used social monitoring platform, CrowdTangle. These
developments have raised concerns around social media companies’ ability to
anticipate and respond to online harms during a year in which elections are
being held in more than fifty countries, including some of the world’s
largest democracies.

NDI seeks a short-term consultant to support an initiative to measure the
impact of these developments on organizations and individuals operating in
the democracy, human rights, and governance (DRG) space. These impacts will
be measured through surveys and semi-structured interviews and will inform
the development of a report to supplement the advocacy of NDI and other
organizations in the DRG community around the accountability and
transparency of social media companies.



Deliverables

   - A synthesis of changes social media companies have made to their
   policies and enforcement practices since 2022 that represent a potential
   retrenchment on trust and safety and civic integrity, to be produced
   primarily through desk research
   - In consultation with NDI, develop and implement a survey or
   questionnaire to measure how DRG actors perceive the impact of these
   changes on democracy and information integrity. Illustratively, the survey
   could measure observed changes in resolutions to reporting of harmful
   behavior and accounts, the ability to conduct research on social media
   platforms, and access to channels for direct communication with social
   media companies
   - Semi-structured interviews with at least ten stakeholders, identified
   in coordination with NDI, to supplement the survey responses with more
   robust, detailed examples
   - An assessment of relevant evidence gathered by other organizations (as
   needed)
   - A narrative summary of the findings from the survey and interviews

Expected Period of Work

July 2024 - October 2024



Desired Qualifications

   - Familiarity with social media companies’ structures and policies
   - Demonstrated involvement in dialogue around tech sector trust and
   safety, accountability, transparency, etc.
   - Knowledge of developments in tech regulation (ex: the Digital Services
   Act, General Data Protection Regulation, other international laws)
   - Experience working internationally and/or with DRG actors
   - Proficiency in an additional language would be a plus

Interested applicants should send a resume, cover letter and proposal
submission to include a  portfolio of past work and a detailed budget with
fee requirements to Rachelle Faust at rfaust at ndi.org.



Joly MacFie
218 565 9365