We need volunteers to monitor the media and parties

Full Fact is preparing to operate an 18 hour a day factchecking centre, from 6am to midnight every day of the election campaign.

Monitoring is the raw material for everything we do - we need claims before we can factcheck, and we need factchecks before we can say anything about those claims publicly. In short, we can’t run the election project without monitoring volunteers.

We will be offering lego and playdough to those of you with brains too buzzy to be kept busy by heated political TV discussions alone.

In return for your generosity, we’ll welcome you with gratitude, pizza and glowing references. This is a great opportunity to gain experience of an election in an entirely non-partisan capacity.

We’ll be tracking the key claims that emerge from the parties and media, as well as the things that will draw the media’s gaze away from factual disputes: will the Royal Baby blow everything out of the water? Who will have a brain fade? Which slogans will set the Twitterati quivering?

Who we're looking for

We’re looking for people who are able to pay close attention to a variety of media outlets (print, online, broadcast, social media), track contentious claims and work with our analysis team to make sure our rebuttal is fast and timely. (We love a fast and timely rebuttal.)

We’re a small team trying to make a big dent on a £m election campaign - so we’ve whittled our media targets down to a pretty select list. That means there’ll be peaks and troughs of activity. So we’ll be looking for people around specific times - if you are working a 9-5 but still want to hold the political players to account, we can definitely use you in the evening and early morning.

We’re starting on 30th March and ending ~8th May

Desirable:

• Any experience of media monitoring or news analysis/evaluation.
• Interest in or experience of journalism experience
• Familiarity with media landscape/news environment

Essential:

• Basic facility with MS office
• Strong interest in politics
• Attention to detail

If you don’t feel as if you have any of the ‘desirable’ qualities, please don’t be put off - we’re looking for people who can get stuck in, not (just) polished professionals.

Please contact us to get involved - afc@fullfact.org.

Further information - please read!

Shift system This is a proposed shift system: we need most people early in the morning to get to grips with national papers and broadcast breakfast programmes. So, many of the shifts will be early morning (6am), but we’ll try to rotate these. Similarly, some shifts will be late evening - again we’ll rotate these.

About Full Fact Full Fact is an independent, non partisan factchecking organisation. We provide free tools, information and advice so that anyone can check the claims we hear from politicians and the media.

We’re a registered charity with a cross party board, and funded mainly be charitable trusts.

Since starting in 2010 we’ve factchecked thousands of claims, secured corrections from almost all national newspapers, the BBC, MPs and pressure groups. We were instrumental in the Daily Mail and The Sun setting up their first ever corrections columns and pioneered live-factchecking in partnership with the BBC, Sky News and LBC radio.

Contact us now to become a monitoring volunteer: afc@fullfact.org.