Description of Services: To deliver a one-day workshop for up to 12-15 participants from the Conflict Prevention Centre, Situation/Communications Room and possibly other departments within the OSCE on the topic of Social Media Monitoring by the end of June 2014. The general goal of this assignment is to develop a more systematic approach to monitoring Social Media which is compatible with current Situation Room technical capacity. More specifically:
Providing an overview for brief and sound theoretical underpinning of key Social Media platforms and their behaviour, with due regard to the OSCE Area and Eurasia features as well as relevant regional variants/digital divides;
Explaining the place of Social Media in the Conflict Cycle, feedback loops and the limits of monitoring, by identifying clear signals or patterns commonly indicating an escalation (e.g. hate language, inflammatory postings/pictures) which can be used for early warning and altering the relevant political experts/Regional Desks;
Enabling Duty Officers to enhance monitoring by sharing practical advice about search, filtering and critiquing Social Media sources, with interactive sessions to compare existing Situation Room practice with widely recognized standard platforms (incl. demonstration or group exercise). Cyber-security aspects might also be mentioned in this regard.