Debunking fake news and building trust in Warsaw
The fifth season of our Editors Lab programme took us to Warsaw Poland, for an event sure to be rich in ideas as the teams had the task to build prototypes to help newsrooms bridge the trust gap with their readers and viewers.
On 20–21 March 2017, the Global Editors Network (GEN) and TVN24, with the support of the Google News Lab, hosted some of the best Polish media innovators at Campus Warsaw. The challenge for the participants was to devise new ways to build trust with audiences.
First up: learning from the experts
Google News Lab
Beata Biel from the Google News Lab spent some time imparting valuable insights on the Google tools that will come in handy to the participants as they are building their prototypes. Biel also presented a few initiatives such as CrossCheck, Check, Citizen Desk, Electionland and Storyful, to inspire the teams on trust and verification, data journalism, immersive storytelling and diversity in the media.
TrustServista
George Bara from Zetta Cloud presented TrustServista to the participants, a a machine learning-based tool that calculates trustworthiness scores for online articles. The dashboard of the solution allows users to easily track the origin of the informations from the article .
Texty.org.ua
The next speaker was Anatoliy Bondarenko from texty.org.ua imparted valuable tips, via video-conference, to the participants on how to build trust.
1. Have a direct relationship with your audience, answer their questions,
2. Involve them in your reporting,
3. Don’t hide your tech. Be transparent about the tools and methods you are using.
4. Be honest when you are making a mistake.
5. Don’t hide the data you are using. Readers should be able to reach the same conclusions you did on their own.
Texty.org.ua is a socio-political and analytical online platform combining professional and civic journalism, with a strong focus on data-driven storytelling and interactive visualisations. The platform is shedding some light on the recent struggles Ukraine faces as Russia is conducting repeated aggressions on the territory.
Hacking, hacking, and more hacking
The teams from ASZdziennik, Faculty of Journalism University of Warsaw, Gazeta Wyborcza’s BIQData, Outriders, Polska Press Grupa, Se.pl and TVN24 got to work: they had to find a concept, brainstorming the modus operandi and start building it to be able to present a functioning prototype to the jury at the close of the two-day event. The pitches must follow the following rules: five minutes to explain the idea behind the prototype and show the team’s work, delve into the problem they are attempting to solve, define their target audience and list the technology used to develop the project.
After each team took the stand to present their projects, the jury composed of George Bara from Zetta Cloud, Krzysztof Madejski from ePF Foundation and GEN’s Evangeline de Bourgoing devised on the best projects, and the winning team which will go to the GEN Summit 2017 in Vienna, 21–23 June to compete in the Editors Lab Final.
And the winner is…
ASZdziennik and Outriders for their project FollowOn.
FollowOn is a tool that enables readers to keep track of a news story in all of its stages and never lose the bigger picture. With FollowOn, readers can subscribe to notifications, and will receive updates on their chosen news story through notifications when new developments happen, effectively creating ‘news episodes’ to build communities around the best journalism reports.
Rafał Madajczak, journalist and founder of ASZdziennik:
“We are very happy that our FollowOn solution is worthy of winning this hackathon. It was a tremendous experience, especially as a mixed-up team coming from different organisations, as we got to meet and learn a lot from each other. We look forward to working together in the future on new projects.”
Jury member George Bara of TrustServista:
“What swayed us to pick ASZdziennik/Outriders’s prototype FollowOn as the winning project was that it really has a future as a software tool designed for newsrooms and for publishers who want to really engage with their audiences.
ASZdzennik and Outriders’ prototype FollowOn will do great in the long term, engaging a publication’s audience and keeping them up to date with the stories they choose to follow, including the readers in the storytelling process. This will increase the trust toward the specific publication using it”
Special mentions were awarded to Se.pl for their prototype Comment Request, an editorial plugin that allows editors or journalists to send requests to sources via social media and, to Gazeta Wyborcza’s BIQData for In Facts We Trust, a plug-in for readers to comment on sentences in articles, giving journalists the opportunity to reply with relevant facts.
The participants awarded the Public’s Choice to ASZdziennik and Outiders for FollowOn.
To view all the prototypes created during the TVN24 Editors Lab, click here.
Read more on the TVN24 Editors Lab and get the photos here.
