Twenty-six successful applicants, drawn from over 200 applications in The Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, will undergo a training that will equip them to combat the widespread regime of misinformation aka ‘fake news’ in the West African sub-region.
West Africa’s verification and fact-checking platform, Dubawa, has started the induction of twenty-six fellows into its 2021 class of fact-checkers to combat misinformation in the sub-region.
The platform, under the aegis of the Premium Times Centre for Investigative Journalism, announced the commencement of the yearly fellowship in Abuja on Monday.
Having run for three consecutive years, the 2021 fellowship is christened Kwame Karikari Fact-Checking and Research Fellowship in honour of Ghanaian Professor, Kwame Karikari, redoubtable media freedom advocate and founder of the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), the fellowship is inspired by the need to tackle the menace of mis- and dis-information within the sub-region and beyond.
The Nigerian Cohort of this fellowship is Supported by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
Twenty-six successful applicants, drawn from over 200 applications in The Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, will undergo a training that will equip them to combat the widespread regime of misinformation aka ‘fake news’ in the West African sub-region.
“Upon completion and evidence of competence after a ten-course module the participants will graduate into the six months in-country fellowship,” Dubawa programme manager, Adedeji Adekunle, said in a statement.
According to him, the training faculty for the programme is drawn from a pool of the leading global experts in the field of fact-checking who come with individual and organisational talents.
The trainers include Peter Cunliffe-Jones, founder of Africa Check, and current course co-director/researcher at the University of Westminster in the United Kingdom; Youri van der Weide, researcher and trainer at the global investigative organisation, Bellingcat; and Craig Silverman, author, trainer, and the digital editor, at BuzzFeed.
Others are Professor Kwame Karikari, former professor, School of Communications, University of Ghana, Legon and Chairman of the Board of the Daily Graphic newspaper in Accra; Dr Chido Onumah, coordinator of the African Centre for Information and Media Literacy, AFRICMIL; Kemi Busari, Editor of DUBAWA; Deji Adekunle, DUBAWA Programme Manager; Caroline Anipah, Ghana Programme Lead for DUBAWA; and Dapo Olorunyomi, Executive Director for the PTCIJ.
It was also noted that participants at the course will learn about the accountability journalism ecosystem in the sub-region and how to fix the current information disorder through legal, regulatory responses and through media literacy.
They will also learn fact-checking methodology, the skills and steps involved in fact-checking, ethics of journalism and fact-checking; data presentation and analysis for fact-checking, media literacy, monitoring and analysis of social media content and accounts; investigating websites, as well as freedom of information/Right to Information laws in West Africa and the verification of digital tools.