2019/Grants/Iffy.news

Title:

Iffy.news

Name:

Barrett Golding

Wikimedia username:

hearvox

E-mail address:

bg@hearingvoices.com

Resume:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/barrett-golding/
https://github.com/hearvox
https://profiles.wordpress.org/hearvox/
https://hearingvoices.com/best-of-bg/

Geographical impact:

USA

Type of project:

Research + Output

What is your idea?

Wikipedia articles for publications can be an indicator of news site reliability. This project will use the Wikipedia API to programmatically determine the likelihood of media credibility (comparing results from my database of reliable US newspaper sites and fake-news sites). This will be combined with other indicators to generate reliability estimates.

Why is it important?

An easy way to assist in evaluating the credibility of a media source.

Is your project already in progress?

Unreliable News repo , Cred Score (hypothesis), Fact-check Feed (articles by US fact-checkers, 2016–present), Fact Checkers tool, News Netrics media site performance metrics. All coming together soon at Iffy.news.

How is it relevant to credibility and Wikipedia? (max 500 words)

Core to credibility and a new way to use Wikipedia API.

What is the ultimate impact of this project?

Can be used by researchers, advertisers, and media consumers to evaluate source reliabiiity.

Could it scale?

It doesn't need to.

Why are you the people to do it?

Because it needs to be done and no one is doing it.

What is the impact of your idea on diversity and inclusiveness of the Wikimedia movement?

None that I can think of.

What are the challenges associated with this project and how you will overcome them?

None, really, just a lot of work.

How much money are you requesting?

1000

How will you spend the money?

Develop the API script to search (by domain name) for Wikipedia articles. Import Wikipedia data. Find signals to programmatically identify articles about un/reliable sources Submit related info to relevant Wikipedia articles (like List_of_fake_news_websites).

How long will your project take?

1 month

Have you worked on projects for previous grants before?

NEA and CPB grants: https://hearingvoices.com/
U of MO J-School grant: https://news.pubmedia.us/
United States Artists fellow: https://www.unitedstatesartists.org/fellow/barrett-golding/
Reynolds Journalism Institute fellow: https://www.rjionline.org/stories/series/storytelling-tools