Populist Rebellion in 21st-centuryCentral and Eastern Europe(POPREBEL) is a European Commission Horizon 2020 project seeking to explain the rise of populism/illiberalism in Central and Eastern Europe and to find ways to resist populist and illiberal rhetoric and action. We are focused on understanding peopleās own perspectives on these issues to inform long-term strategies and policies. We currently convene a set of four large online conversation spaces in Polish, Czech, Serbian and English, where people discuss these issues and on which Edgeryders performs continuous ethnographic analysis. This analysis will then be used by the POPREBEL consortium and the EC in their policy initiatives.
In 2020, we will be adding a German-language conversation space and are thus looking to hire a German-speaking community manager to collaborate with us on this project. The project runs for three years in total but this work will run for approximately 21 months, starting at the earliest, on a part-time basis (about 20% of your time or about 8 hrs/week). The salary is EUR 35/hr.
Requirements:
Experience desirable, but not strictly necessary if you are an experienced participant in online communities.
Fluent in German and English.
Able to work part-time without set hours, during the day or night, with strong time-management skills.
Good writing skills. Able to advance a conversation by interacting constructively with others.
You need to be open, accepting, tolerant and a good listener. At the same time, you need to be able to maintain civil discussions and manage conflicts when emotions run high.
Passionate and reasonably knowledgeable about the subject matter of POPREBELās goals.
A good collaborator, who works well with a team and takes direction from management when needed.
Your professional and personal network includes people involved in social activism.
Tasks:
Participate in, moderate and be responsible for ongoing online conversations about the rise of populism and illiberalism and related issues.
Contribute and work with the project team to prepare community events in Germany and/or Europe. Assist in outreach efforts that include scheduled group video calls and local live events organised by Edgeryders.
Add to online conversations by providing links to reference material, articles and papers when appropriate.
Maintain a lively and civil atmosphere. Mediate conflicts when necessary.
Help other participants with the platform when they need or request it.
Workplace:
You can do the work online, from wherever you are, but you may be requested to participate in one or more physical meetings. And there will be a required two-day training session in Brussels. Your travel expenses for these meetings will be covered. We coordinate and communicate through the Edgeryders platform.
Post a reply to this topic below [Now hiring: German community manager] and tell us why you are motivated to join the team, about your interests and current work, or any life story you think is meaningful. When you write it, consider the following questions:
What experiences have you had that are most related to POPREBEL? What stories can you share?
Does your own network of colleagues and friends discuss issues relating to the rise of populism/illiberalism? Are any of them involved in social activism related to these issues?
Include a link or reference to your CV (preferably online).
Applications will be reviewed as they are received until the opening is filled. We will notify all candidates in a comment below when we close the call.
as this is a ā at least for me ā quite unconventional way to apply for a job, I see this as a perfect chance to additionally apply with personality rather than qualification only.
My partner, a community manager, told me about the job and how I would be a perfect fit.
Now Iāll tell you why: I am studying social works in Germany and as you can imagine the subject of populism spreading all over Europe is getting discussed a lot. Not only at university but with friends and family as well.
Especially my grandparents (citizens of formerly GDR) are really āconservativeā when it comes to talking about immigrants and refugees. Every time my family meets, I try to let them know how important it is to differentiate where news are coming from. Particularly because my grandparents are on Facebook and therefore get lots of false information about refugees.
Furthermore there are always those people I meet who donāt know me yet but as soon as they hear I am going to be a social worker theyāll start a discussion about politics and refugees. So throughout my studies Iāve been meeting people challenging to contest over who is able to allege more reasons about ārefugee crisisā.
Thatās why I would love to contribute to POPREBEL with my positive attitude, mediative skills and social qualities. Iām a good listener and always try to understand the point of view of everyone I talk to, meaning Iām good at working in a multi-professional team.
If you decide to hire me you would get a person with an immense thirst for knowledge. I am able to work my way into almost every topic if necessary. Learning new things means for me to widen my horizons and that is always an upside. In addition, I spend a lot of time on the internet so I know how to check if sources are reliable or not and can deal with a social media platform as well.
Thank you for applying! My colleague who will be co-ordinating the recruitment will be back from her vacation next week, after which we will be in touch.
Thank you for applying! My colleague who will be co-ordinating the recruitment will be back from her vacation next week, after which we will be in touch.
Very nice to meet you @unicornfairydinosaur and @Ulrike.
I am the lead community manager in the project and a co-founder of Edgeryders. Here is my own personal introduction in this project.
I would ask you to look at several resources and see if indeed the project speaks to you. We tend to be quite rigorous asking team and community to make this effort of reading and writing, and structuring information online, so this is a litmus test for you
Community conversations across several countries in this forum, organised for each language and an International category for those writing in other languages: Wellbeing in Europe - Edgeryders
Our community for this project started a year ago, and in the International space youāll find the English language content, including this story from Berlin:
Anything from all the above which speaks to you?
Our work as conveners of people and stories online has one important challenge: we need to make it relevant for individuals to come and share, and interact with each other. That is before we even get people to come online and interact with them online. Have you had experiences with community engagement yourselves?
Hi @noemi,
did you have a nice holiday?
I used the last few days clicking around a bit, but rather superficially as I did not know how the process would go on. Some profils, some conversations, some backgrounds. Now we have weekend and I will take my time to digg deeper.
Have a nice weekend everyone!
Best wishes
Ulrike
Iām behind my plans, due to a cold. Sorry about this. But the community is still on my agenda and Iāll be back soon.
One question concerning the social media promotion: can everyone read the comments too? Feels strange when my application is shared with this. Or did I get something wrong?
Yes, people can read this thread as our platform is a public forum. We do this open recruitment to preserve transparency in the way we work, for the sake of the community and providing access to each other, forging new connections between members etc. That means that even if someone doesnāt get a particular gig, they can meet others in the process or stay looped in with other opportunities. It also makes it easier for the community managers or those coordinating the work to handle everything in one place. The questions candidates have get pooled in, and responses may be accessed by others.
That being said, feel free to only share what you are comfortable with and edit or delete your comments as you see fit. You can also message me or Richard in private for more confidential information (see our profile pages - there is a message button there where you can directly contact us) .
Thanks for the information above, @noemi. Iām sure, it will take some time to explore the community. But this is quite normal. Communitys are like a new town. First you think: Boahh Iāll never find my way and after a while you do not even notice where to go because it is all so familiar.
I like your Social Contract and the Guide for Community Managers. Do all Community Managers welcome all new members? Might be confusing for the āNewbiesā. What is your experience with this? What is the time frame for welcomes or answers? By the way, is the access to ācheck for new usersā restricted to team members? Following the link Iāve got an error message (no longer available or private).
Producing good (sharable) content to bring people to the platform and creating an appreciative atmosphere that encourages new members to participate in the discussions, is the best way to reach the critical mass in a community. Itās not easy as I know from my former jobs. But it is such a great feeling when you realize that people start discussing with each other without your support.
So yes, most from all the above speaks to me.
How will things go on? For me, the personal impression of the people I probably will have to work with, is as important as the topics. How about a video call?
Community managers have a routine of picking and welcoming members who might be part of the project they are working on. For example - in POPREBEL we were looking at usernames that seemed to be Polish/Czech/Serbian. It is not always easy to guess because of incomplete profile information, but we coordinated to cover the gaps and each community manager welcomes people within a max one week after signup.
Indeed, the list of new members is available to site moderators - therefore to the community managers on board.
Hi @noemi,
so nice meeting you.
Unfortunately I have been dealing with some health issues the past weeks which is why it wasnāt able to respond until now.
I began to read the manifest of POPREBEL. Iām so grateful to learn more about various types of populism, so thanks a lot for the work and effort everybody put into that.
Even though I believe my chances to be picked for the job are ridiculously low, because Iām no professional community manager but Ulrike is, I wanted to let you know that I am still interested in your work!
Populism is a topic that should concern us all, especially people like me who are or will be working with different kinds of people affected by it.
As a social worker to be I am particularly happy to read about how you see the community as a work of everyone who is part of it plus the people you havenāt reached yet. No matter the gender, nationality, age or whatever it is - weāre all different and that is it what makes us special.
What I am wondering is: how do we get to know the community good enough considering the 8 hours of work? I know that getting to know people is a quite long process, specifically online. And as I understand it youād like the community managers to know the guys weāre talking to (which is totally fine with me of course). I just canāt imagine the dimensions of the project right now (maybe because of my lack of experience I must admit).
So my experience with community is more a reallife expierence, like organising learning groups or other student-centred stuff (e.g. discussions in the lectures). This is why I like how youād like us to greet every new member of the community - as I get it this would be the German speaking?
In almost every smaller lecture of my studies we do like a small introduction round so we get to know eachother a little better.
In good periods when we do a lot of engagement we would have a few signups a day/ country. Our role is to help direct the people to the opportunities of the project - and it starts with inviting them to share their story. By reading their stories and interacting with them is how you get to know them. It comes natural - to give you an example, writing a thoughtful comment takes me 20 minutes at most (reading the story and coming up with questions or links to offer to the author). When I go in to answer for the second time, I simply resume the conversation.
We do not expect more than a few tens of stories in the German community this year, so it should be doable.
Letās talk more in private, i will set up a call so we can go through the requirements and see if we are a good fit for each other!
We talked about the community manager role also known as āEierlegende Wollmilchsauā
I wrote about it in 2012 (!) and definetely had fun with it. Donāt take it too seriously.
I think it was interesting that Social media manager and Community manager roles were fitted both under the more strategic Social media consultant role.
This reminds me of how most community managers roles are needed as a cog in the corporate sector online marketing machine.
For non-profits, and community organisations as a whole, Iām pretty sure today this should look differently. As we discussed in our call, we need community managers to take on more responsibility with respect to growing the membership and the relationships quality, and this involves so much more than moderation.
I also see the caveat of piling in a lot of skills into the role - especially smaller organisations cannot afford a very segmented and specialized role, and prefer people with (too) many talents :-)) That was spot on and a very legitimate criticism, Ulrike. Thank you for sharing it with us!
Hello! I apologize, but I canāt see the application deadline (even though I see that the job starts this month), so I am wondering: is this position still open? Thank you for your time.
I woke up yesterday feeling simply overwhelmed by everything thatās been going on in the world. The refugees crisis on the European borders added to the intense conversations Iāve been having everyday with my friends lately, in real life or social media: the Hanau shootings, N-word usage, racism and lack of diversity and representation in art and on a daily basis in Germany and elsewhere, not to mention the corruption and disinterest suffocating my homeland. Hours later, I received an email from Noemi, with this job description. Somehow it made sense.
I have no educational background in politics or social sciences, however I found my own way of activism through my artistic practice. All my political awareness and engagement is a learning process that started since coming to Germany for my MA in film with Wim Wenders at the HfbK Hamburg in 2011. Romanian-born and raised, I was now to find my own place in the world and connect with people that share my mindset, because being part of any kind of minority teaches you that you just cannot not be political. This has organically developed itself into an ongoing video project called all the fridas, the beauty of rebellion (https://allthefridas.com). The aim was to bring together a community and ask questions, have genuine conversations and try to fill gaps that felt urgent, being proactive and personal in our practices. If you flip through it, youāll see that diversity and representation, as well as equality and kindness are basic and common features that connect us, all the people being involved in the project being friends that are mostly all politically active in their own personal way.
Now living in Berlin as a freelance filmmaker, Iām actively involved in the pre-production of our feature film debut and the all the fridas project is on hold. The urgency to address relevant issues is still there, just the form of the storytelling is changing - we tell a story of a post-migrant family in Germany, basically addressing present migrant/ post-migrant human experiences in Europe and actually anywhere really - Cinema is our subtly political tool to react to whatās currently going on, because the story only changes when we change the storytellers.
I thought Iād share this with you because it briefly sums up my drive, where I come from and where Iām standing now on the issues that I feel that we have in common. Yes, itās a different way of activism, engagement and storytelling, but as long as our interest and curiosity and goals are alike, I would love to learn more about being a community manager in this new context. Iām genuinely interested in this new kind of challenge and open to offer you my time and energy 8h hours a week for trying to speak out and bring people together and make a change (both in English and German). Iām looking forward to seeing if you think the same.
Hei Dana, thanks for applying and sharing the call,
Have you had a chance to look through the links shared here?
My question to you would be: how do you feel about needing to be a bit of a loudspeaker for the project and reach out to your networks to get their stories in writing? (can you describe to us your network, some groups or people (profiles) whom you know and would think they might be approached?
Also, how do you feel about helping organise events in Berlin?
