Media officer volunteer roles

This Role Is Where Trust Is Built—or Lost
At Tell My Truth and Shame the Devil C.I.C., social media is not a marketing channel. It is often the first place someone tells the truth. The first place a survivor speaks. The first place a young person asks for help, direction, or hope. The Social Media Engagement Officer is the human presence behind our platforms — responding, guiding, holding boundaries, and directing people safely into the right parts of our ecosystem. This is not a growth-hacking role. This is a trust, discernment, and care role.
 
Purpose of the Role
The Social Media Engagement Officer ensures that every interaction on our digital platforms is:

• Human, not automated
• Trauma-aware, not reactive
• Boundaried, not extractive
• Purpose-led, not performative

You are the bridge between content and community — between attention and action.

Experience Qualification and Requirements

Essential experience

• Experience in community engagement, online community management, moderation, or customer support where tone, safety, and trust matter.
• Experience communicating in sensitive contexts (e.g., advocacy, youth work, frontline/community roles, safeguarding-adjacent environments).
• Experience handling challenging messages, conflict, harassment, or emotionally charged content with professionalism and calm judgement.

Essential skills & qualities

• Strong written communication skills, including the ability to respond clearly, respectfully, and consistently in public and private channels.
• Emotional regulation and resilience when exposed to distressing content, survivor stories, or hostile interactions.
• Reliability, discretion, and strong boundaries, including comfort following protocols and escalating without delay.
• Ability to apply trauma-informed language and maintain C.I.C tone-of-voice without offering counselling or personal advice.
• Ability to triage and route people appropriately (donations, volunteering, VFAP, podcast submissions, resources) using approved pathways.
• Attention to detail for logging patterns, risks, and recurring needs, and sharing structured feedback with the team.

Desirable 

• Experience engaging across multiple platforms (TikTok, Instagram, X, YouTube, LinkedIn) and adapting tone to platform norms.
• Familiarity with safeguarding principles, escalation workflows, and online safety practices.

Training & support provided

• Safeguarding protocols and escalation pathways.
• Platform-specific engagement standards and tone-of-voice guidance.
• Escalation and reporting systems, including how to log risks and recurring themes.

Main Responsibilities/ Key Duties

• Monitor comments, replies, and DMs across C.I.C platforms to maintain a safe, respectful, and survivor-centred community environment.
• Respond consistently in alignment with C.I.C values and tone, using trauma-informed language and maintaining clear safeguarding boundaries at all times.
• Direct individuals to the correct pathways and resources, including donation routes, volunteer onboarding, VFAP (Violence-Free Action Pathway), podcast submissions, and approved support information.
• Identify and flag safeguarding concerns immediately to the appropriate role, ensuring that potential risk is not held in engagement channels.
• Escalate high-risk messages using agreed protocols, prioritising urgent or concerning disclosures, threats, harassment, or boundary breaches.
• Help maintain comment spaces that are respectful and free from harassment, minimisation, victim-blaming, grooming behaviour, or abusive language, taking action in line with moderation guidance.
• Support healthy engagement by encouraging constructive dialogue, de-escalating where appropriate, and reinforcing community standards without argument or defensiveness.
• Log patterns, risks, and recurring community needs (e.g., common questions, frequent triggers, misinformation themes, safeguarding hotspots) and feed insights back to the team.
• Work closely with Community Moderation & Safety, Safeguarding, and Campaign/Content teams to ensure joined-up responses and consistent public-facing messaging.
• Maintain confidentiality, discretion, and professional boundaries; you do not counsel, diagnose, or provide emotional support — you route safely and responsibly.

This role is not suitable if you:

• Want to debate or argue online
• Struggle with emotional boundaries
• Seek influencer-style engagement
• Want creative control over content
• Are unable to follow safeguarding procedures strictly

This is not about visibility — it is about responsibility.

Important to Be Clear

• This is a volunteer role during the build phase
• It carries real responsibility and trust
• Emotional maturity is essential
• Paid roles will emerge as the organisation becomes financially sustainable

Next Steps

Shortlisted applicants will be invited to:

• A values-led conversation
• A short scenario-based engagement discussion

If you believe that how we respond matters as much as what we post, and that care is an operational function, not a feeling, this role is for you.

 A Final Word
Social media is about people, not platforms.

If you know that:

• Trust is built through presence, care, and consistency
• Boundaries are a form of protection, not distance
• Privacy and consent are safeguarding responsibilities
• How we respond matters as much as what we post

It’s shaping up to be a busy year at Locate International, with a lot of important stories to tell. We need people who can help us tell them – and play a huge part in resolving cases.

We’re looking for more people to join as volunteer media officers – this will involve writing press releases for our missing and unidentified appeals, giving interviews and forging partnerships with broadcasters and publishers.

The right people will be able to write well, will ideally have a journalistic background, and will have experience dealing with different media outlets and their demands. But they must also be able to work with sensitivity and care.

We meet for an hour every Tuesday night on Zoom, and volunteers are expected to contribute an average of six hours a week.

We are searching for a enthusiastic volunteer to become the Newcastle chapter's Social Media Officer. The primary role is to ensure the smooth every day running of the social media accounts. This involves responding to messages (even if it’s just sign posting) and replying to comments. They should try to ensure growth of the social media account including Facebook and Instagram with the potential of Twitter. They should make use of the Facebook groups to create an engaging atmosphere for members and chase lead volunteers to ensure they post on the page and group promptly following events. After each event they should make posts following up on it. Finally, they will liaise with photographers and assist with designing and running the website.