Training and consulting services

We can train you and your media organisation on how best to ‘read’ digital campaigns. Sessions (typically 1/2 day, in person or remote) include:

How to use platform ad libraries and Who Targets Me data to understand and explain the campaign goals of political parties and candidates.
How to plan your digital election campaign coverage. We’ll take you through a range story ideas that can run during the campaign as well as the practicalities of creating them.

Trainings are run by our Executive Director, Sam Jeffers. If you’re interested in booking a training session with us, please get in touch.

We regularly talk on the topic of political ads, modern political campaigns around the world, researching the internet and regulation.

If you want to invite us to your event, please get in touch with a proposal, including whether you can cover expenses and/or pay a fee.

Alongside training, we offer bespoke consulting services in five areas:

For political parties, we advise on responsible digital campaigning practices. This might include commitments to transparency and use of voter data, as well as creating parallel commitments for affiliated entities such as candidates, foundations and think tanks.

For platforms and websites, we advise on political advertising policy. This might include advertiser verification, transparency, ad library design and data access, as well as other service-specific recommendations to reduce risks to democracy or individuals caused by political advertising.

For academics, we help design novel computational research projects to understand the impact of social media, particularly on politics and political campaigns. We design and build software and recruit panels of users to help gather data or participate in experiments. Visit Understanding Social Media for more information on our tools, and for a demo.

For governments and regulators, we advise on the design of online political advertising law, implementation and monitoring. This includes understanding the trade-offs inherent in regulation, creating balanced proposals and assessing likely future impacts.
For media organisations, in addition to the above training, we can help design a full package of coverage of the digital aspects of political campaigns, develop tools and visualisations and provide expert analysis. We’ve seen all sides of digital campaigns, in the US, Europe and beyond, which gives us a unique perspective on the practicalities and realities, as well as the risks, of running a digital election campaign in the 21st century.

In offering these services, we bring our own experience and expertise of the issue, as well as a network of experts and practitioners.

Note that we prefer to work on projects that have a positive impact on the safety and integrity of a campaign.

If you are interested in working with us, please get in touch with a brief outline of your project and we’d be happy to set up a call.