Professional health and development

This section includes resources T&S professionals may find valuable for learning more about and advocating for professional health and development. For example, studies and reports about interventions that can best support content moderators, toolkits and trainings related to individual privacy and psychological well-being, and stories that feature the T&S professional experience.

Online Extremism and Terrorism Researchers’ Security, Safety, and Resilience: Findings from the Field

Pearson, E., Whittaker, J., Baaken, T., Zeiger, S., Atamuradova, F. and Conway, M. | 2023Type: Report

VOX-Pol's new report presents findings from the REASSURE (Researcher, Security, Safety, and Resilience) project's in-depth interviews with 39 online extremism and terrorism researchers. Based at universities, research institutes, and think tanks in Europe and North America, the interviewees studied mainly, albeit not exclusively, far-right and violent jihadist online activity. The report catalogues for the first time the range of harms they have experienced, the lack of formalised systems of care or training, and their reliance therefore on informal support networks to mitigate those harms.

Precision & Recall

Simon Cross | 2023Type: Blog post

TL;DR: “Precision” is a measure of the accuracy of a detection system. Improving precision is to reduce your false positive rate. “Recall” is a measure of the coverage of a detection system. Improving recall is to reduce your false negative rate.

Responding to and Preventing Doxing: A TSPA Resource

TSPA | 2022

Due to the nature of trust and safety work, T&S professionals face an increased risk of harassment, stalking, and other forms of online and/or physical harm if their personal or private identifying information is exposed to the public. The community at TSPA developed this guide as a resource for T&S professionals, but we are releasing a public version for anyone who might find it helpful.

Content Moderator Startle Response: A Qualitative Study

Timir Bharucha, Miriah E. Steiger, Rainer Mere, and Priyanka Manchanda | 2022Type: Conference proceeding

Prior research on content moderators has failed to explore moderators' initial reactions to content from the start of employment through tenure as the subjection to material and habituation increases. This qualitative study takes an in-depth look at moderators' experiences from recruiting, through training, and production to better understand the content moderators' startle response and factors that enable startle habituation.