The jury thus recognised the Maldita.es team for its innovative approach to tackling the problem of disinformation on private messaging channels.
26,000 users in one year: 61% recurring
In July 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, we launched our WhatsApp chatbot to automate the process through which we received reports of potentially misleading content from our community, as well as our responses. In addition, this system allows us to collect, classify, track and analyse disinformation in order to study how it circulates. In this way, our journalists can better serve the community and bring users closer to journalism and quality information. Our automated chatbot makes it possible to verify suspicious content in video, audio, image or text format, as well as to receive media literacy content. Users can also request a written or audio summary of the latest fact-checks.
After almost a year in operation, more than 26,000 people have used our automated service, 61% of whom have done so more than once. Our chatbot has sent more than 400,000 messages, received 108,000 pieces of content to be verified, and delivered 143,800 daily fact-check summaries in text format and 18,400 in audio format. In 2021 alone, 16,200 users contacted us, with an average of more than 950 conversations per day between those seeking to verify content and those requesting other chatbot features. The WhatsApp chatbot is a joint effort by Maldita.es and the technology company Wealize, which specialises in creating conversational platforms.
This award coincides with the publication of an analysis of how our chatbot works by our Academic Research Unit, entitled “Disinformation on WhatsApp: the Maldita.es chatbot and the ‘Frequently Forwarded’ attribute”, which provides valuable data for fact-checkers when addressing disinformation on WhatsApp. The report shows, with data, how the “frequently forwarded” label (messages forwarded more than five times) is an indicator of high virality and disinformation in the context of reports received through a WhatsApp chatbot like ours. In 80% of cases, the most viral content is also the content associated with the highest number of FF alerts.
If you would like to understand this better, you can read the report here:
Download report in Spanish.
Download report in English.
Third time’s the charm
This is the third time we have been nominated for the European Press Prize in four years.
- In 2017, Maldita Hemeroteca was nominated.
- In 2018, Maldito Bulo was nominated.
This year’s jury was made up of former The Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger; deputy editor of Süddeutsche Zeitung Alexandra Föderl-Schmid; deputy editor of Eldiario.es Juan Luis Sánchez; editorial director of Le Monde Sylvie Kauffmann; and freelance journalist Sheila Sitalsing.
In the other categories, the winners were:
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Distinguished Reporting: Janusz Schwertner (Poland) for his work “Love in the time of plague”, about the story of a 14-year-old transgender boy who was the victim of homophobic attacks and was not cared for by Poland’s psychiatric system.
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Investigative Reporting: Roman Anin (Russia) for “Kirill and Katya: Love, offshores, and administrative resources. How marrying Putin’s daughter gave Kirill Shamalov a world of opportunity”, which tells a story of money, power and corruption through emails exchanged between Kirill Shamalov and Katerina Tikhonova, former brother-in-law and daughter of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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Opinion: Zsolt Nagy (Hungary) for his article “When Trianon hurts differently”, about the importance of the Treaty of Trianon between Hungary and Romania, signed 101 years ago.
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Special Award: Anastasiya Boika, Maxim Litavrin, David Frenkel, Yegor Skovoroda, Maria Tolstova, Nikita Shulaev and Dmitrii Treshchanin (Belarus) for their project “Brutalised Minsk: how Belarusian police beat protesters”, awarded in honour of independent journalists working in the country.
This prize has been awarded annually since 2012 to celebrate the greatest achievements in European journalism. This year, it received more than 1,000 submissions from 47 countries, the highest number in its history. The competition is organised by seven European foundations: The Guardian Foundation, The Politiken Foundation, Agora Foundation, Media Development Investment Fund, The Jyllands-Posten Foundation, The Irish Times Trust Limited, The Thomson Reuters Foundation, Stichting Democratie & Media, Vereniging Veronica and Luminate.
This recognition would not be possible without the support of our Malditos and Malditas community. If you are not yet part of our community, you can join through this link.
If you would like to use our chatbot and help us fight disinformation, message us on WhatsApp at +34 644 22 93 19. You can report potential hoaxes that are circulating and, if they have already been fact-checked by our team, you will receive the debunking instantly. In addition, every day you can receive an audio and text summary of the day’s fact-checks and learn more about how to combat disinformation through our media literacy content option.
