Training media professionals to be “WikiFactCheckers”
The media is the focal point of any information ecosystem — without the media, there can be no effective information dissemination system.
This WikiCred project trains media professionals how to use Wikipedia, Wikidata, and WikiCommons. Project curriculum explains the importance of quality and adequate references for Wikipedia articles documenting their activities, what resources media professionals need to provide to journalists covering and reporting their activities, and how Wikipedia editors reference citations in articles related to the activities.
If Wikipedia is to remain reliable as a free open information and educational resource, it must be kept safe from misinformation and disinformation which may have been deliberately or inadvertently published by the media. This is critical because the reliability of information published by the regular media is directly related to the reliability of information on Wikipedia. This is more so because of the totally open accessibility of Wikipedia which ordinarily places a burden of fidelity of its content on its authors and editors, and where they choose to source their references.
As well, the world has changed dramatically in the last few decades as citizen journalism has nearly taken over the information ecosystem. This has created a seemingly disoriented and easily misinformed society. It has therefore become imperative to train our media professionals not just about sourcing news and corroborations, but also on how to identify and establish items of misinformation and disinformation from the plethora of news and feature articles in the media, for example.
Media practitioners must be trained on how to fact-check information using fact-checking tools and techniques in order to recognise misinformation and disinformation.
The Role of Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers. The nature of Wikipedia makes it important for the Media to get involved in the sourcing and writing of information stored on Wikipedia. Without adequate information from the media, the Wikipedia editor cannot write accurate information, so it is critical for a Journalist to understand the basics of Wikipedia because Wikipedia is the place where we can store all our notable contents without fear of losing them later.
Project outcomes
This training is aimed at better equipping 1,000 media professionals across Nigeria and further sharpening their media and information literacy skills, fact-checking skills, Wikipedia skills, and archiving skills. The training will invariably help the media accept Wikipedia as an information tool, which will help change the negative mindset about Wikipedia among other professions, especially in the educational world. In a few words, “Once the media is actively involved with Wikipedia, the world will bow and see how important and critical Wikipedia is to human existence.”
Progress so far
The training is in batches of 10 weeks’ training for up to 40 media professionals at a time. The project kicked off with a needs assessment form. It was sent out for two weeks, and we had 153 media professionals as respondents, expressing their interest in the training.
The course combination will help media professionals access information and write from a reliable source on Wikipedia using fact-checking tools. The onboarding session kicked off on the 16th of February with over 48 participants in attendance. We created a WhatsApp platform for the project with over 110 active participants.
The project has also partnered with Code for Africa to train the participants on how to fact-check information online. After the training, if participants meet the certification criteria, they will be given a certificate from Code for Africa, and welcomed into the Code for Africa Wikipedians community.
The training will end with a pre-workshop conference in May where we will have all trained media professionals who were participants of the training and invited guests from the media and the Wikicommunity discussing about the challenges we are facing with reliability of information which in turns affects the credibility of Wikipedia as an open source. How do we tackle these challenges and bring sanity to our information ecosystem?
How to get involved
If you are a media professional and you want to join the community of media professionals who are working to fight against misinformation online and on Wikipedia and you want to improve your media and information skills, learn how to fact-check information online and on open source like Wikipedia, learn how to contribute to Wikipedia and its sister projects, and also archive your information sources. You can sign-up for the WikiFactCheckers training and join the community of professionals working hard to ensure a stability in our information system.https://forms.gle/QQWnNH8GcjcrXQQc9
You can also join us at our pre-workshop conference, which is coming up in May, to discuss the challenges we are facing with the reliability of information, which in turn affects the credibility of Wikipedia as an open source. Sign-up for the conference: https://forms.gle/r2oRaHzAQkoZ5XNf7
