Digital Research Manager

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Job Information

Contract: 12 month FTC
Location: The role will be based in one of BBC Media Action's offices in Africa or Asia. Current BBC Media Action offices are in the following cities, and the role could be based in any of these, subject to the prevailing security situation at the time of appointment: Abuja, Addis Ababa, Dar Es Salaam, Delhi, Dhaka, Freetown, Hargeisa, Jakarta, Juba, Kabul, Kathmandu, Lusaka, Nairobi, Phnom Penh, Tunis, Yangon. Candidates based in these countries but outside these cities would be offered support to relocate if necessary.
Salary: Competitive on relevant local scale
Reports to: Senior research manager

Job Purpose

The Digital Research Manager will be responsible for ensuring research is well designed technically across a portfolio of countries, and is appropriately resourced, implemented, reported and disseminated to a range of audiences. Reporting to a Senior Research Manager, the Digital Research Manager will be responsible for managing the research programme in multiple countries. The Digital Research Manager will work with their local counterparts to conduct research both to support media production teams' requirements and to evaluate the impact of projects.
As more BBC Media Action projects focus on using digital platforms to reach, engage and inform audiences, the Digital Research Manager will specialise in conducting research which will help to understand digital audiences and advance organisational understanding and management of digital metrics, as well as the measurement of the impact of digital projects.

Key Responsibilities and Accountabilities

1. Undertake, and support others to design and undertake research and analysis that will help to understand audiences' changing use of digital and online media in developing contexts, to support the development of media and communication products.
2. Design, develop, and support the implementation of an improved system of data analytics, segmentation, and visualisation using existing social media data and other digital data across projects. Support and mentor in-country research teams to use such systems.
3. Conduct analysis of large and complex quantitative data sets and communicate insights of such datasets in a simple and intuitive format for all stakeholders, supporting interpretation and utilisation of the findings, working in partnership with in-country research teams to deliver such analysis.
4. Support the team to design and conduct innovative digital research to inform and understand the impact of digital output.
5. Support and develop local research team, including coaching, mentoring and/or training to develop their research and management skills and technical skills; providing quality oversight at the agreed level for each project.
6. Communicate complex technical ideas using non-technical language to a wide range of audiences from journalists, production staff and development practitioners.
7. Work closely with in-country research managers and local researchers to ensure that all research activities are designed with safeguarding in mind, and that research design documents and tools reflect this. Participate in relevant mandatory training on Safeguarding and Respect at Work and implement these within all aspects of work.

Knowledge, Skills, Training & Experience

1. Good knowledge of quantitative and/or qualitative research techniques (gained ideally through experience of digital and social research across different populations and contexts and across any of media, governance, health and resilience sectors), making sure they are fit for purpose and of value.
2. Understanding of or experience of working with AI, machine learning and chat bots.
3. Strong skills in analysis, visualisation and interpretation of data. Skills in some or all of the following are a great benefit: statistical modelling tools (e.g. SPSS, R, Python, STATA), data visualisation tools (e.g., Tableau, Power BI) and/or social listening tools (e.g., Brandwatch, Meltwater, CrowdTangle/Meta Content Library).
4. Skills and experience in using digital research approaches to monitor and evaluate the impact of social media or digital media interventions.
5. Excellent skills in communicating complex data and insights to a range of stakeholders (including non-researchers and those whose first language is not English) in non-technical, creative and engaging ways - translating theoretical research into practical applications.
6. Strong digital research experience, including conducting research to understand digital media usage, analysing social media data (such as social listening, sentiment analysis, and/or network analysis), and reporting on/visualising social media metrics and working with others to interpret them.
7. Experience monitoring trends in digital media usage, particularly among youth audiences. Existing knowledge of emerging digital media usage trends in markets where BBC Media Action works desirable.
8. Experience and understanding of applying and training others to use social media analytics and social listening tools (e.g., Brandwatch, Meltwater, CrowdTangle/Meta Content Library, web analytics), and using these to provide useful insights to project delivery/production teams.
9. Strong experience of supporting others in data analysis.

About BBC Media Action

BBC Media Action is the BBC's international development organisation, and we believe in the power of media and communication for good. We work in more than 20 countries around the world, supporting the independent media essential to democracy and development. Each year our projects and programmes reach over 100 million people facing poverty, inequality and insecurity with information they can trust, helping to improve health, bridge divides, challenge prejudice, and save and change lives. We follow the editorial standards and values of the BBC, but we rely on funding from donors and partners to carry out our work.
The cross-country research team at BBC Media Action supports research activities across all of our offices globally, from providing support to research design to producing insights for in-country production teams. As such, the successful candidate will support global projects from wherever they are based.