Meedan

Meedan is a technology not-for-profit that builds software and programmatic initiatives to strengthen journalism, digital literacy, and accessibility of information online and off.[1]

Meedan
Formation2005
TypeNon-Profit Organization
Legal status501(c)3 non-profit
HeadquartersSan Francisco, CA
Founder, CEO, Chairman
Ed Bice
Jon Corshen

Hanan Heakal

Tim Hwang

Zeynep Tufekci

Maria Ressa
Websitemeedan.com

Meedan builds an open-source software platform for fact-checking and content annotation[2] and runs a service that brings together public health professionals to provide expertise and summaries of challenging public health concepts on-request for journalists, fact-checking organizations, and media outlets.[3] Meedan also runs a project to improve digital literacy, community-building and political engagement skills for citizen journalists, activists, journalism students, civil society organizations and human rights defenders through training, programming and research[4][5]

Background

Meedan, whose name means "gathering place" or "town square" in Arabic, began as a project to model boundary (language, culture, ideology) crossing "dialogue and collaboration" as the key to creating "understanding and tolerance" between different communities online and offline. A fundamental premise of the organization is that social technology on the web can play a part in enabling information equity and media literacy between the peoples of different regions, thereby helping to improve cross-cultural understanding. Meedan's vision is thus to "create a more equitable internet."

Meedan was founded by Ed Bice in 2005 and incorporated as a nonprofit charitable organization in 2006. Bice, who was formerly the Executive Director of The People's Opinion Project, and currently serves as Meedan CEO and chairman. Jon Corshen, Hanan Heakal, Tim Hwang, Zeynep Tufekci and Maria Ressa also serve on Meedan's board of directors.

Current Projects

Meedan's Check software creates tiplines for fact-checking on encrypted platforms. This open-source software allows users of WhatsApp and other platforms to forward suspicious messages to misinformation tiplines operated by fact-checking organizations.[6][7] Check's first major use was for Electionland, a 1,000-person collaborative reporting project led by ProPublica that tracked claims of voting issues on Election Day 2016.[8]

Meedan's Health Desk software hosts a COVID-19 Vaccine Media Hub, which provides journalists and fact-checkers with a trusted source of evidence and experts they can turn to, as they report on the fast-evolving news around COVID-19 vaccines.[9]

Past Projects

Meedan.net

Launched in 2009, Meedan.net was Meedan's first project. It was a forum for cross-language conversation and media sharing in Arabic and English.[10][11] Users could browse aggregated sources around world events – blogs and mainstream sources; opinion and reporting; Arabic and English writing – and help expand the news narrative by posting articles and comments themselves. All sources and comments were mirrored across Arabic and English using a combination of machine and human translation.

Meedan.net was included in the 2008 New York Times Magazine "Year in Ideas" issue: "It’s a lovely idea: a social-networking site with automatic translation bolted on. That’s Meedan, a gathering place for English and Arabic speakers who want to exchange thoughts on Middle East issues. Comments are translated automatically and instantly; Nebraska can now chat with Nablus."[12]

Meedan's translation technology has been developed in collaboration with The Watson Research Group at IBM with which it entered into a research partnership in 2006. Development has focused on Machine and Machine Augmented Translation tools that enable users to improve translations collaboratively, including IBM's Transbrowser – a browser tool for creating a translation layer on the web.[13]

Bridge

In 2015, Meedan built Bridge, a tool for social media translation using a combination of human and machine translation.[14] Translators using the app could follow different topics or users, and when they saw a post they wanted to translate they could tap on it to start a translation. Once they got to the main translation screen, users could call up a machine translation from Bing.

Research

Meedan co-founded the Credibility Indicators Working Group, with Hacks/Hackers. The project had four core aims: to develop the framework of credibility indicators to test; to refine the process of credibility indicator development through testing and annotating a wide variety of articles; to evaluate the training data developed through these annotations in partnership with potential users, and to define this entire process for the coalition group members.[15]


References
  1. "Check uses automation to improve fact-checking during elections | Media news". www.journalism.co.uk. 2019-08-09. Retrieved 2022-05-27.
  2. "Check uses automation to improve fact-checking during elections | Media news". www.journalism.co.uk. 2019-08-09. Retrieved 2022-05-27.
  3. "Edition 33 - Mobilizing Public Health Professionals to Support Journalists and Fact-Checkers During the Covid-19 Pandemic - HPHR Journal (Formerly Harvard Public Health Review)". 2021-05-30. Retrieved 2022-05-27.
  4. "Student-led outlet fights misinformation, trains young fact-checkers in Nigeria". International Journalists' Network. Retrieved 2022-05-27.
  5. Turner, Jerome; Saber, Dima (2021-01-13). "Understanding factors and barriers to alternative media development in emerging economies: Learning from the Check Global project". First Monday. doi:10.5210/fm.v26i2.11370. ISSN 1396-0466.
  6. "Human or machine? Social science or computer science? Yes, we need them all". The Commons. 2020-11-30. Retrieved 2022-05-27.
  7. Kazemi, Ashkan; Garimella, Kiran; Shahi, Gautam Kishore; Gaffney, Devin; Hale, Scott A. (2022-01-31). "Research note: Tiplines to uncover misinformation on encrypted platforms: A case study of the 2019 Indian general election on WhatsApp". Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review. doi:10.37016/mr-2020-91.
  8. "This tool is helping newsrooms collaborate on factchecking and verification projects". Nieman Lab. Retrieved 2022-05-27.
  9. "COVID-19 Vaccine Media Hub open for service". www.sciencemediacenter.de. Retrieved 2022-05-27.
  10. Singel, Ryan. "Site Hopes Automatic Arabic-English Translation Translates into Peace". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 2022-05-27.
  11. "Bridging the Online Language Barrier: Translating the Internet". NPR.org. Retrieved 2022-05-27.
  12. Giles, Jim (2008-12-12). "Learning to Talk". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-05-27.
  13. "Meedan puts machine translation into practice". the Guardian. 2010-02-22. Retrieved 2022-05-27.
  14. "Tweeting across borders: With a new mobile app, Meedan is working to improve social media translation". Nieman Lab. Retrieved 2022-05-27.
  15. "The Credibility Coalition is working to establish the common elements of trustworthy articles | Media news". www.journalism.co.uk. 2017-10-30. Retrieved 2022-05-27.
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