Part two of the webinar recap: Developing resilience in the Digital Safety field is focused on providing a deep dive into daily tips and best practices that can potentially help to mitigate the negative effects of stress on your body.

Our guest speakers Marlena Lagasse and Shakeila Valentine suggested that having a safe office setup can significantly help to mitigate the consequences of impactful content. It is important to consider, that certain content will naturally elicit negative emotions. Establishing a private workspace can help to avoid directly affecting the people around you. This will simultaneously help to prevent unwanted exposure to harmful content for people who are passing by your workstation.

The right setup

Marlena Lagasse went on to explain the importance of choosing the right level of content immersion: "It is important to choose equipment that allows you to view the content clearly enough to make sound business decisions, but does not create an immersive environment" - Marlena Lagasse, Sr. Critical Content Analyst. Here are some useful things to consider:

• Audio is usually not necessary for content moderation. When required avoid noise-cancelling headphones to reduce impact.
• Determine how large images or videos must be to make a sound judgment: keep the images and resolution as small as possible.
• Watching content on a large screen can increase the impact: using a laptop screen is recommended
• Privacy screens should be installed on all devices used to moderate content
  
  

Taking control of the image

In addition to determining the appropriate size and definition of the content, it can be beneficial to take control of the imagery by changing or tinting the colours, watching videos in reverse, flipping images upside down, or reducing the clarity of the content: "manipulating the content that you are reviewing helps to distance yourself from that content further emotionally" - Marlena Lagasse, Sr. Critical Content Analyst

Daily wellness tips

• Prepare yourself for content moderation by listening to some music or doing a word puzzle.
• Choose a phrase that signals the beginning and end of your shift i.e. 'shields up' and 'shields down.' This can help to distance yourself from the content you are reviewing.
• Take regular small breaks and distract yourself with other activities such as going for a walk, watching a funny video, drawing, or colouring.
• At the end of your shift play 10-15 minutes of Tetris to change the channel in your brain.
  
  

Open conversations

With colleagues
Marlena emphasised, that the tools provided in this overview are only useful when there is an open conversation, trust, and empathy in your work environment:

• How we want to be supported varies from person to person: ask your colleagues what they need in impactful situations.
• Communicate to your colleagues how you prefer to be supported in difficult situations.
  
  

With your family and support group
Working in content moderation requires a supportive network of friends and/or family: “explain to your family what the challenges of the job are and what you may need from them when you come home from a bad content day” - Marlena Lagasse, Sr. Critical Content Analysts.

This recap provides a brief overview of the main tips and best practices that can be implemented in your workspace to establish a bigger focus on wellness. More details on how to develop a personalised wellness plan can be found in the webinar recording. To access the recording, participants can contact us at: communications@inhope.org


Disclaimer: The purpose of this webinar is not to provide legal, medical, or counselling advice but to share established best practices that can help content moderators in developing healthy wellness and resilience practices.