Activities
Activities
Partnering with Multiple Stakeholders
We have done projects partnering with multiple stakeholders in media literacy, fact-checking other related topics
Check Global
MARCH 2022 – CURRENT
Inform Africa, under, Meedan’s Check Global program, is executing a project to onboard interns and provide on-the-job training on fact-checking, disinformation, misinformation, and media monitoring. Aside from the internship program on this project, Inform Africa will organize online campaigns, panel discussions, and research launches in media literacy and countering disinformation.
Meedan is a global technology not-for-profit that builds software and programmatic initiatives to strengthen journalism, digital literacy, and accessibility of information online and off.
Check Global
Meedan’s Check Global program supports independent journalism, media literacy, and human rights efforts by providing software, training, and networking opportunities to independent media organizations, journalism schools, and human rights activists in the Asia Pacific, Latin America, and the Caribbean, North Africa/Western Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa regions.
Addressing the ‘Disinfodemic’ on COVID-19 in conflict-prone environments aimed at strengthening citizens’
July 01, 2021 – current
Inform Africa’s Combating Disinformation project is being supported by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) with a common objective of providing a long-lasting preventive mechanism and a swift remedy for information pollution by adopting the evolving fact-checking solutions at the national level and beyond.
Inform Africa has planned to accomplish its objectives firstly through a partnership with an already existing partnership it has maintained through its media partner Addis Zeybe.
The Addressing Disinformation project will utilize the in-house HaqCheck initiative to ensure that the reporting it undertakes can be wholly truthful and independent. As a recently established initiative, the project is in a position to act as an example of a new higher standard for combating disinformation.
Media Literacy Campaign
JANUARY 2022 – SEPTEMBER 2022
Inform Africa with support from its media partner Addis Zeybe, is in the process of screening and selecting twenty social media influencers to give training on the five competencies of media literacy. They will be trained on a set of skills that will enable them to access media, analyze media content, create new media messages, reflect on existing media content, and take action with media. After concluding their training, the trainees will conduct social media campaigns in four rounds.
Inform Africa will train and equip the influencers with packaged campaign materials prepared by its research team. The social media influencers will run the campaign using the materials by adding their creativity under close supervision and monitoring from the designated facilitator.
Combating Disinformation and Human Rights Violation through Fact-Checking and Investigative Reporting
OCT 1, 2020 – MARCH 31, 2022
Inform Africa and its media partner, Addis Zeybe, are working on a project entitled Combating Disinformation and Human Rights Violation through fact-checking and investigative reporting with the support of the Open Society Initiative for East Africa (OSIEA).
Inform Africa’s HaqCheck initiative, is a local and multilingual fact-checking initiative from Ethiopia, formed in partnership with Addis Zeybe, dedicated to verifying media content from social to mainstream. HaqCheck has been fact-checking various social and mainstream media content that went viral, misinformed the public on COVID-19, and promoted vaccine hesitancy. Investigative reporting on Human Rights Violations in Ethiopia is the other aspect of the project.
Practical experience of countering disinformation in Ethiopia
Inform Africa, in partnership with BBC Media Action Ethiopia, organized and delivered training on “Practical experience of countering disinformation in Ethiopia” for journalists and media experts who were chosen from various media institutes and have a variety of educational and professional backgrounds.
BBC Media Action: BBC Media Action has been working in Ethiopia since 2001 to provide people with reliable, trusted information to help keep themselves and their families healthy and build the capacity of local public-interest media and journalists.
Holistic Reporting of the coronavirus pandemic and its socio-political and economic impacts in Ethiopia
DEC 2020 – SEP 2021
Inform Africa has been working with Free Press Unlimited (FPU), a media development organization based in the Netherlands on a holistic reporting of the CoronaVirus pandemic and its socio-political and economic impact in Ethiopia under the Covid-19 response in Africa. The project is funded by the European Commission and Inform Africa has been tracking and monitoring misinformation reports on Covid-19 since Dec of 2020.
To address misinformation related to COVID-19, Inform Africa has conducted a thorough report on the impact of the pandemic on schooling, health services, the media, and IDPs. In addition, Inform Africa hosted a heated and fruitful Policy Debate on COVID-19 between frontrunner Political Parties running in the 2021 General Election in Ethiopia.
Understanding of Disinformation’s Pathways and Effects on Digital Rights and Democracy Actors in Africa
OCT 21, 2021 – FEB 28, 2021
Inform Africa is currently collaborating with CIPESA on a study on disinformation in Ethiopia. CIPESA and partners are conducting the research in five African countries (Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda), notably around periods of political contestation such as elections and anti-government protests, as well as that related to hate speech.
The aim is to understand the nature, perpetrators, strategies, and pathways of disinformation, and its effects on democratic actors including civil society, bloggers, government critics, and activists. Further, the project will study the adequacy and effectiveness of remedial measures by platforms, as well as government responses to disinformation. The project will generate evidence to inform multi-stakeholder advocacy for greater transparency and robust action by platforms to minimize harms and to combat disinformation, and proposals on national regulation that fully protects free expression and democratic values while combating what is indisputably harmful content and practices.