Journalists and technologists are teaming up through ICFJ’s Disarming Disinformation initiative to develop innovative tools: an app that helps experts create viral social media videos, a tool for journalists to quickly answer audience questions, and other products to help news publishers reach people with quality news and information.
“The common denominator for all of the projects is to get audiences real information faster than misinformation spreads,” explained ICFJ facilitator Sandra Barron. “They are using technology to help address the problems of misinformation around the world, to help audiences be better informed.”
After attending virtual workshops, eight teams took part in a Design Sprint in Istanbul last week to develop their products with the help of expert mentors. “What we want to do in a design sprint is to test the solution before committing a whole lot of resources to building it,” said Barron.
Throughout the week, participants worked on defining the problem they were trying to solve, as well as understanding their audience. They came up with multiple ideas to respond to their problem, and prototyped the most promising one, before user testing and improving it.
The process helped teams sharpen their focus. “Once we figured out who the core audience member was, it made narrowing down what we were building a lot easier,” said one participant.
Others concluded that their initial product could turn into something more robust. “My prototype has evolved so much in that it was a web tool that did one thing before I came here, and now I have a fully fledged simulation of what the prototype would look like as an app,” said Sophia Smith Galer, a video journalist.
The Solutions Challenge was also an opportunity for journalists and technologists from around the world to learn from each other. “Being in a space that incubates and encourages innovation invites more creativity, more innovation,” said Smith Galer.
“You meet other people, and mentors, from different continents and cultures, who have different objectives and issues,” said Mikhail Ageev, the president of Internet Innovations Foundation (Kyrgyz Republic). “You can just interact with them, share your ideas, vision, and it can motivate you to look differently at the problem you are trying to solve.”
Participants received support from expert mentors Justin Arenstein of Code for Africa, ICFJ’s Maggie Farley and Nasr ul Hadi of PROTO. Selected projects will receive up to $20,000 and further mentorship to transform their prototype into reality.
The Solutions Challenge was part of ICFJ’s Disarming Disinformation initiative, a three-year global program that aims to support solutions that effectively push back against mis and disinformation. Disarming Disinformation is funded by the Scripps Howard Foundation, an affiliate organization of the Scripps Howard Fund. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation also provided support for the Solutions Challenge.
The projects include:
- Project: A tool to help users discern the veracity of information across social media platforms. The product would monitor emerging stories to detect and analyze coordinated or suspicious activity.
Team: Zhouhan Chen, Nick Toso - Project: A model designed to provide responses to WhatsApp users interested in verifying the accuracy of the information they receive on the platform.
Team: Luis Fakhouri, Aglisson de Souza Lopes, Omar Teles da Rosa - Project: An internal dashboard enabling local news reporters to quickly share bilingual service journalism directly with their readers via SMS during climate emergencies.
Team: Andrew Ford, Kyle Omphroy, Caitlin Petrakovitz - Project: A personalized, interactive platform that delivers region-specific information about Ukraine’s efforts to rebuild. The project aims to promote transparency, accountability and community.
Team: Victoria Matuzka, Liudmyla Mishchenko - Project: A dashboard powered by AI that helps users search through company reports and asset managers’ investments to detect and expose misleading climate claims.
Team: Giorgio Michalopoulos, Tushar Saini, Stefano Valentino - Project: An AI-powered tool to optimize short videos for engagement on social media. The app would help experts write scripts for vertical videos, as well as provide filming and editing tools.
Team: Alice Mo, Sophia Smith Galer
Note: ICFJ will share more details about all the projects once the products are fully developed.