And of course, seeing others pay attention to how we do things — together — makes us happy, especially when the ones taking notice are a global reference in the fight against misinformation: Politifact. At Maldita.es, we were delighted to welcome Josie Hollingsworth (Politifact) to our offices during the last quarter of 2019.
The IFCN – International Fact-Checking Network, an organization that brings together the world’s leading fact-checkers and of which Maldita.es is a signatory, offers every year a visiting program called the IFCN Fellowship. The program consists of two fellowships that allow a member of one IFCN organization to send a person to spend a residency at another participating organization.
This year, the fellowship recipients were Soila Kenya, from the African organization Pesa Check, who traveled from Nairobi to London to learn from the fact-checking team at the British organization Full Fact, and Josie Hollingsworth, audience editor at Politifact, who traveled from the United States to Madrid to join the Maldita.es newsroom and study its membership model.
Soila Kenya and Josie Hollingsworth. Photo: IFCN
Josie Hollingsworth considers the Maldita.es membership model to be unique: “The malditos and malditas actively support the search for truth, in some cases as experts.” Hollingsworth’s goal is to understand the strategies used at Maldita.es to identify the superpowers of the malditos and malditas and how we use them in our daily fact-checking work. In addition, Hollingsworth also wants to learn how the Ambassadors help us make Maldita.es economically sustainable as an independent, non-profit media outlet.
Hollingsworth is also very interested in how Maldita.es uses tools like WhatsApp to encourage community collaboration: “I would like to learn more about how the malditos and malditas send content to be fact-checked through WhatsApp. At Politifact we are trying to make that process easier so we can better serve our readers and members, and Maldita.es is a great example to follow.”
The Maldita.es membership model
The Maldita.es model is based on its community: the malditos and malditas alert us to misinformation circulating on social media and WhatsApp, help us debunk hoaxes in the Buloteca and with their superpowers, and contribute to spreading our fact-checks. They also support us financially so that Maldita.es can remain an independent, non-profit media outlet.
In July 2018 we launched our WhatsApp service, a very important step that allowed the malditos and malditas to help build the media outlet they needed. Through WhatsApp they send us the misinformation that worries them: our team reviews every message one by one to provide an answer and forwards to the Maldito Bulo team anything that can be fact-checked.
In October 2018, the Engaged Journalism Accelerator awarded a grant to Maldita.es to develop tools to support our membership model, focused on working with our community. One month later we launched #FundaMaldita to raise the money needed for the next step: becoming a foundation. More than 1,600 people joined to give us a push and help us reach that goal.
In June 2019 our collaboration with the community became even closer: we encouraged them to take part more actively with their superpowers in our fight against misinformation and to become ambassadors by making a financial contribution that would guarantee the independence of Maldita.es.
At Maldita.es we continue working on our community-driven model. One of the commitments of IFCN Fellowship participants is to publish articles about their experience. We welcome Josie and hope to learn with her.