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In Egypt, online group Qawem saving hundreds of women from sextortion

Ihab Zidan

June 20, 2021 |

Deutsche Welle (DW) |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: Egypt

The Egyptian Facebook group Qawem (Arabic for resist) helps victims of sextortion by turning threats around to target the attacker. Sextortion, in which threatened disclosure of a person's nude or other embarrassing photos are used as a tool of extortion, is illegal in Egypt. But women – the typical victims – are often reluctant to report incidents to the police, out of shame or fear. When victims report sextortion attempts to Qawem, volunteers counsel the victims while other volunteers track down the extortionists and threaten to expose them to their family or friends. About 200 cases per week get resolved.

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India's healthcare workers are busting misinformation on WhatsApp

Sanket Jain

June 17, 2021 |

The Verge |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: India

Accredited social health activists (ASHA) across India fight COVID-19 related misinformation on WhatsApp. ASHAs provide basic health care to people in their villages, which puts them on the frontline of treating COVID-19 patients and educating people to dispel the many myths about the virus and its treatments. ASHAs' local interactions often identify prevailing myths, which they quickly dispel in their face-to-face exchanges and by posting in the many local WhatsApp groups that have been created. The local groups have been an effective mode of educating people and helped ASHAs gain villagers’ trust.

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How teens are using online platforms to call out racism in high school

Umme Hoque

June 16, 2021 |

Prism |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States

All over the country, students are using the internet to call out racism. Young people are publishing open letters, creating Change.org petitions and Google Docs “with lists of racist people in their classes, and using online platforms to organize protests.” In Boston, teens from the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center wrote an open letter asking school officials to address the wave of anti-asian hate crimes. After the letter, officials issued a resolution. Although, in some instances these actions do result in change, sometimes it can result in censorship towards students of color.

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How Native Americans launched successful coronavirus vaccination drives: ‘A story of resilience'

Rachel Hatzipanagos

May 26, 2021 |

The Washington Post |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States

Comprehensive COVID-19 vaccination strategies helped some Native American Nations achieve high vaccination rates. Tribal sovereignty gave Nations the flexibility to create their own methods of distributing the vaccine and allowed officials to distribute doses to hard-to-reach areas – even by dog sled in Alaska. They could prioritize who to vaccinate and diversify how vaccines were offered – from private appointments to mass-vaccination events – to ensure broad accessibility. Medical professionals, tribal leaders, and Native youth used social media to share information and encourage people to get vaccinated.

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How Social Media Fact-Checking Limits, But Can't Eliminate, Online Disinformation

William Newlin Fabian Munive Lora Yordanova Mack Brown

May 20, 2021 |

Grady Newsource |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States

Social media companies are using artificial intelligence to help identify misinformation. Once identified, human fact checkers will verify the posts. Facebook uses 60 partnered fact-checking organizations as well as SimSearchNet++ image-recognition system that can identify image manipulation and slight changes to misinformation. Hundreds of millions of posts are flagged every year and those that are identified as “false” or “altered” are labeled with warnings and distribution is reduced.

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People Are Using an Ancient Method of Writing Arabic to Combat AI Censors

Hakim Bishara

May 19, 2021 |

Hyperallergic |

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Under 800 Words

Response Location: Palestine

To get around algorithms that have flagged and removed Palestinian content, users on platforms like Facebook and Instagram are using an old version of Arabic, dating back at least a thousand years, that doesn’t have diacritical points (dots above or below letters). Converting Arabic into a dotless form in social media posts makes it much more challenging for AI machines to identify because they use a binary code to identify each letter.

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Meet the influencers who are fighting the spread of online conspiracy theories

Christianna Silva

April 28, 2021 |

Mashable |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States

Social media influencers are using “pre-bunking” -- the practice of exposing people to misinformation and offering expert-backed explanations of why it isn’t true before they see the misinformation in the wild – as a tool to fight its spread and increase media literacy. Hundreds of thousands of people follow accounts on TikTok and Instagram run by influencers whose goals are not to change the minds of staunch conspiracy theorists, but rather to provide tools for those who are either on the fence or want to learn to communicate with people in their lives who subscribe to false information.

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Indians are crowdsourcing aid as covid surges

Varsha Bansal

April 28, 2021 |

MIT Technology Review |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: India

In India, citizen-led small-scale digital efforts are helping to connect Covid-19 patients with the resources, supplies, and medical equipment they need to survive. The citizen groups are largely using online platforms to crowdsource what they need, with some matching buyers and sellers and others "debunking inaccurate leads."

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The exchange project uniting young Americans during the pandemic

Stephen Staff

April 13, 2021 |

BBC |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States

The American Exchange Project connects high school students from different socio-economic, racial, and regional backgrounds across the U.S, with hopes to become the country’s first domestic exchange program after the pandemic. So far, 175 students at 39 schools in 14 states have connected in weekly online “hangouts” where discussion topics range from favorite music and other commonalities in the lives of teenagers to more serious issues such as racism. Getting to know people from different backgrounds has helped dispel stereotypes and some participants have forged real friendships with one another.

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Enterprising Solutions: Local Paper Builds, Benefits from Facebook Boom

Ian Allen

April 13, 2021 |

Grady Newsource |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, Oconee, Georgia

The strategic use of social media has helped The Oconee Enterprise increase subscribers, and therefore revenue. When a new issue of the paper is ready, a low-resolution preview of the front page is posted, with essentially only headlines visible, to incentivize people to purchase a paper or subscribe online. Editors also post breaking news directly on Facebook rather than the paper’s website. Its total page likes went up from 3,500 to its current audience of over 7,300, and the number of subscribers is up as well.

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