Search-calling for proposal: Social media use needs assessment for at-risk groups and in-depth analysis of use of social media in Indonesia

 

Terms of Reference

Social media use needs assessment for at-risk groups and in-depth analysis of use of social media in Indonesia

Search for Common Ground (SFCG) Indonesia invites application from individual consultants/firms/ research organizations dealing with the freedom of religion or preventing/countering violent extremism to carry out research to i) identify groups who are deemed the most at-risk; ii) understand appropriate mechanisms and processes to mobilize resources (people, organizations, tools) to divert them away from extremist narratives and towards positive messaging, iii) identify the specific drivers of radicalization and messaging tools used by extremists, as well as iv) employ a participatory methodology to research and further create a curriculum and message development that will drive the project’s outputs.

The Organization

Search for Common Ground (SFCG) is an international peacebuilding organization that promotes the peaceful resolution of conflicts. SFCG’s mission is to transform how individuals, organizations, and governments deal with conflict - away from adversarial approaches and toward cooperative solutions. SFCG seeks to help conflicting parties understand their differences and act on their commonalities. SFCG implements projects from 56 offices in 35 countries, including in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and the United States.

SFCG has been working in Indonesia since 2002 and is implementing programs in conflict transformation, peacebuilding, prison reform, conflict sensitive journalism, electoral participation and initiatives with youth, media, government agencies, informal religious leaders and women’s groups across the country.

Background

“Violent extremism” is currently a preferred term for describing destructive actions or support for such actions undertaken by groups or individuals formally or informally affiliated with them, in the name of “extreme” political or religious ideals—that is, ideas that cannot coexist with the policies of democratic countries such as Indonesia that strongly rooted in cultural diversity and its Five Principles namely Pancasila.

Social media (SM) has become a significant battlefield upon which violent extremism (VE) is being organized. States are continuously struggling to find strategies to counter VE. Increasingly, social media is playing a role in recruitment to violent extremism, and governments and non-government agencies are designing interventions to detect, understand, and counteract the impact of violent extremist recruitment materials on social media and other internet channels. In addition to more traditional surveillance and law enforcement interventions, both government and non-government institutions are increasingly focusing on policies and programs to enable preventive activities such as employing on-line counter-messaging to counteract susceptibility to violent extremist ideologies, or engaging and supporting communities in “real life” efforts to build resilience to these ideologies at the grassroots level...

Search for Common Ground has started implementing a 24-month project under the global SOIC Phase II project with the Global Engagement Center (GEC) to reduce the influence of violent extremist narratives among internet users - particularly youth and ex-prisoners - in Indonesia, as a response to growing intolerance and unchallenged hate speech online in recent years.

This project has following objectives, including;

Objective 1 : Employ online and offline tools and analysis to identify targets for messaging campaigns including both those at-risk for radicalization and those critical to preventing engagement;

Objective 2: Develop diverse tactics to provide alternatives to the ideologies of ISIS and other VE organizations through strengthening the capacity of messaging hubs to effectively adapt and respond to the ever-changing extremist narratives and creating targeted trans-media messaging campaigns;

Objective 3: Expand the capacity of young leaders and networks of messengers to deliver locally-resonant messaging that reduces the appeal of ISIS ideology and recruitment efforts;

Objective 4: Redirect internet users vulnerable to online extremist material towards positive media content in support of a pluralistic Indonesia in collaboration with social media companies.

As part of the inception phase, SFCG requires conducting a needs assessment of the at-risk groups on social media use and In-depth analysis of the use of social media in Indonesia.  This help identifies gaps in effective use of social media and understands the current dynamics of social media use in Indonesia so that effective interventions can be designed based on the information and analysis.

Needs Assessment and In-depth Social Media Analysis

The consultant is required to do research and identify key needs and aspirations of at-risk youths and ex-prisoners in six key locations including Bandung, Solo, Jakarta, Cirebon, Purwokerto and Surabaya. The consultant will look at the specific capacity gaps of stakeholders (youth, religious leaders, CSOs, teachers/professors, parole officers in Balai Pemasyarakatan/Bapas and government support services) in supporting their needs for prevention of recruitment into extremist groups and slipping into violence.

The research will be designed to provide accurate information in answer to the following questions: who are the at-risk individuals; who are the key actors for and against VE; what are the push and pull factors for VE, whether social media platforms are failing at-risk users; amongst others. The consultant is also requested to analyze in more depth the social media consumption habits of youth in our target group and recommend the intervention needed to fill the gaps.

Methodology

The analysis will apply a qualitative methodology to gather key data in order to inform program implementation. Furthermore, the consultant will be requested to conduct several analytical stages including:

1. Dynamics of Conflict, analyzing the indications of political, economic, social or cultural factors regarded as root causes of VE that accumulate in a social environment in which violent extremism can grow, and which may include social alienation, collective narratives of grievance, delegitimization of the state and radicalizing ideologies that revere, glamorize, or offer of rewards for violence.
2. The consultant must work closely with SFCG’s research consultants (who are doing public perception survey on religious freedom) to capture what drives at-risk youth to take action, what social media sites they often visit, for what and how they use social media sites, and how they disseminate information through social media, along with personal social and demographic information that is linked to various acts they do.

Document Review

Along with project proposal, logframe, Review of existing legal documents, national programmes and strategies in the field of religious freedom or belief and countering violent extremism that applied in Indonesia as well as past research literature dealing with legal and policy provisions on religious freedom and its challenges form part of the document review.

Interviews with key stakeholders

As part of the exercise, the interviews should be conducted with key civil society organizations (CSOs), including social media influencers, religious leaders, Ministry of Religious Affair, journalists, students and key experts who play a significant role in the religious space. There will be at least 40 KIIs. The final number and list of KIIs will be determined in consultation with relevant stakeholders and agreed with SFCG at the time of the submission of inception report.

Similarly, the researcher will carry out a few focused groups (between 5-10) discussions with youth and other at-risk groups were possible to understand their collective opinion and thinking.

Key Questions guiding the analysis

•  What are the political, economic, social or cultural factors regarded as root causes of VE in   Indonesia?
•  Are there any state policies, laws or practices that push (directly or indirectly or because of its vagueness and possible misinterpretation) people towards VE?
•  Are there any practices that glamourize radicalization or extremism, which become pull factors for youth towards VE?
• What is the role of government in preventing and countering violent extremism? How are the government institutions dealing with P-CVE?
•  What is their scope of work and what are their strengths and weaknesses?
•  What is the role of key non-state actors such as religious leaders and institutions, school and university teachers, civil society actors, media, and social media influencers?
• What attracts social media users to influencers? What are the capacity building needs of social media influencers to enhance their effectiveness?
• What are the social media networks or platforms that promote extremism or violent extremism?
• What are the prevailing VE extremist discourse that are popular in Indonesian society? What are the prevailing peace narratives making the rounds of social media?
• What are the prevailing languages, notions, specific narratives, modalities or signs used by those networks to communicate certain messages around VE?
• What are the existing social media platforms that promote or reject VE in Indonesia? What is the visitors trend of such social media sites?
• What are the needs of at-risk youth to divert them from VE to positive actions? Are there any formal or informal networks that work to promote fundamental ideas or even extremism?
•  To what level are Indonesian youth familiar with strategies and skills on P-CVE using social media?
•  What attracts youth in social media? What are the capacity building needs of Indonesian youth on positive use of social media?

Scope of Work

The scope of work of the Consultant(s) will include the following:

• Develop assessment instruments with SFCG input through a comprehensive inception report in English. The KII and FGD checklists need to be translated into Bahasa Indonesia once approved by ILT.
• Carry out the literature review, document analysis, and interviews and FGDs
• Produce core content report (in English) covering key findings, major conclusions, and recommendations in order to help inform the development of the program. Once the report is finalized, it needs to be translated into Bahasa Indonesia.

Key Duties of Consultant

1. Collect, analyze, and document information related to P-CVE in Indonesia and other assigned areas, gathering information from NGOs, religious groups, and academics; and monitoring national and international media
2. Use the data generated by a separate quantitative survey to complete the qualitative findings
3. Interviewing selected key informants and conduct FGDs with at risk groups to generate relevant data and information related to the key questions (religious leaders CSOs, faith-based organizations, youth leaders and young ex-prisoners).
4. Produced a report based on a report template agreed with SFCG Indonesia and furnish a set of recommendations based on research findings and best practices to counter or prevent extreme narratives.
5. Outline a curriculum module to improve the capacity of key stakeholders in utilizing social media to promote peaceful narrative.
6. Present research findings to SFCG Indonesia and its stakeholders
7. Participate in a design exercise held by SFCG Indonesia to create a curriculum of desired attitudinal and behavioral changes and a message map.

Deliverables

Within the consultancy period, the consultant is expected to complete the above-mentioned scope of work. The deliverables are as follows:

1.    Inception report and work plan completed within first 7 days. The inception report should have detailed methodological approach and data collection tools to capture the questions as above mentioned. The inception report and the data collection tools/questions need a formal approval from Indonesia Country Representative and Asia Regional DM&E Specialist before starting the assessment process.

2.    First Draft of Need Assessment and In-depth Analysis of Social Media in P-CVE.. The report is subject to SFCG Indonesia and ILT’s Asia Regional DM&E Specialist’s review. The report should be submitted in MS word document.

3.    Final Need Assessment and In-depth Analysis of Social Media in P-CVE: The review and feedback may be of multiple rounds depending on the quality of the report. No final payment is approved unless the report is technically approved by Institutional Learning Team (ILT). One copy of the final report should be submitted in MS- Word format.

4..    Report structure and suggested content: The report should be STRICTLY in English (then translated into Bahasa after finalization) and consist of:

A.     Table of contents;

1. Executive summary that includes brief project introduction, methodological approach, key findings and recommendations (no more than 2-3 pages);
2. Research findings, analysis, and conclusions. The findings section will have subchapters to cover key baseline questions under each objective category.
3. Recommendations for SFCG, in general, and project team, in particular. Provide recommendations and share good practices for governments, CSOs, law enforcement agencies, Internet companies, news media, civil society, individual users and researchers in promoting peaceful narrative –especially but not limited- among youth and most-prone groups. The recommendation should describe how a CVE intervention on social media is hoped to cause a desired outcome helps to ensure that CVE programs can be meaningfully analyzed, evaluated, and compared. Each recommendation should be directly linked to assessment findings.
4. Recommendation for the outline of a curriculum module for stakeholder social media capacity building;
5. Appendices, which include, research instruments, list of interviewees, bibliography, and consultant (s) brief biography;
6. One electronic copy (in MS Word document) each in Bahasa Indonesia and English.

The consultancy period will be from February 9^th to April 20^th, 2018. The applicant is expected to propose minimum no of person-days required for the assignment. The consultant preferably should be based in Jakarta.

SN	Activities	Deadline
1	Application Deadlines	5 February 2017
2	Signing of the contract	16 February 2017
3	Inception report approval	23 February 2018
4	Draft report submission	10 April 2018
5	Final report submission	20 April 2018

Remuneration

The schedule of payment of the consultancy fee is as follows:

1. 50% will be paid upon approval of an implementation plan and Inception Report.  

2. 50% will be paid upon completion and approval of the final report (in English and Indonesia). No Payment (second installment) will be made unless the report is approved by Country Representative/Senior Program Manager, Indonesia, and ILT.

Supervision of the Consultant

The consultant will work under the Program Manager in collaboration with program staff and the Asia Regional DME Specialist.

Qualifications:

• Experience researching social dynamics on social media;
• Strong information and technology background especially in using various advanced analytical tools.
• Proven track record of writing a high quality fully edited report in English and Bahasa.
• Strong understanding of violent extremism, conflict, social analysis with Indonesia context is highly desirable.
• Proven qualitative research skills (candidates should provide a copy of past research, baseline or evaluation reports written in English);
• Work experience in Indonesia;
• Fluent in English and Bahasa Indonesia.

Application process:

Interested candidates should send their CV, technical proposal, financial proposal (detailing the cost calculations), and one sample of research or baseline study led by the applicant and written in English to phandayani@sfcg.org or to here before 5 February 2018. Short-listed offerors are contacted for further selection process. Telephone calls and office visit for inquiries are not entertained. They could be the basis for disqualification.