Code for Africa (CfA) has an immediate vacancy for Misinformation and Disinformation Researchers to join our our Investigative Labs (iLAB) team in Nairobi, Kenya.
Minimum Qualifications
- You’ve got journalism and/or training experience.
- Excellent knowledge of proper compositional practices to aid in writing and proofreading.
- Excellent written and verbal skills, with English as your primary work language alongside Kiswahili.
- Strong organisational skills and ability to deliver results within deadlines.
- Strong decision-making skills.
- The ability to handle large volumes of work within a limited time period and deliver consistent results.
- Amazing presentation skills.
- Critical thinking skills.
- The ability to work with minimal supervision.
Preferred Qualifications
- You have 2+ years work experience
- You have previous experience working on the digital collaboration tools that CfA uses, ranging from Slack and Google Drive, to Trello.
About the Role
The successful candidate will join a team of forensic researchers and data scientists/analysts at the iLAB, who work in support of local partner newsrooms and other civic watchdog organisations.
The iLAB’s role is to offer these newsrooms/civic watchdogs a robust toolkit of open source intelligence (OSINT) leads and resources, along with investigative support for identifying and exposing disinformation and other influence operations intended to undermine our democracies and our economies. This will include helping to identify the botnets, fake accounts and unwitting proxies used by the shadowy ‘puppet masters’ who are producing and disseminating false content. The iLAB also builds actionable data that helps civic watchdogs better understand the nexus between politically exposed people (PEPs) and organised crime networks, and their role in subverting public resources.
You will be responsible for researching and producing content as part of the iLAB project team. This role is primarily dedicated to fact-checking, and will involve supporting newsrooms to meet production quotas. You will report to the Verification Project Manager, and will work with the newsroom champions and other members of the iLAB project team.
Responsibilities
- Identify important disinformation/misinformation claims in the public domain that can and should be fact-checked.
- Undertake research to verify or debunk claims identified and writing explainer articles on how you arrive at your findings in an easily understandable way.
- Contribute to the development of training materials and organise tutorials and training. sessions to be used to conduct training on the basics of verification and fact-checking.
- Support the iLAB project team in checking and verifying claims identified from various sources.
- Spearhead verification and fact-checking within the Code for Africa network.
- Research the latest trends and industry standards around verification and fact-checking to ensure that the fact-checking team is ahead of the curve, and use this information to assist the managing editor to review and document best practices for the benefit of the fact-checking team.
What We Offer
- A competitive salary, subject to experience, with opportunities for performance-based growth both in terms of career path and public stature.
- A dynamic digital-first workplace, with the opportunity for regular remote work, occasional international travel, and generous vacation benefits.
- An innovative cutting-edge project portfolio, that regularly helps push the envelope globally by pioneering new techniques/technologies and that demonstrates real-world applications with grassroots impact for digital tools.
How to apply:
Please fill in this form: http://bit.ly/2lSZqc2 to apply for this position.
About Us:
Code for Africa (CfA) is the continent’s largest federation of independent civic technology and data journalism laboratories, which build digital democracy solutions giving citizens unfettered access to actionable information that empowers them to make informed decisions, and that strengthen civic engagement for improved public governance and accountability.
This includes building infrastructure like openAFRICA and sourceAFRICA, as well as incubating initiatives as diverse as the africanDRONE network, the PesaCheck fact-checking initiative and the sensors.AFRICA network.
The African Network of Centres for Investigative Reporting (ANCIR) is a CfA managed association of the continent’s best investigative newsrooms, ranging from large traditional mainstream media to smaller specialist units. ANCIR member newsrooms investigate crooked politicians, organised crime and big business. The iLAB is ANCIR’s in-house digital forensic unit, with teams in east, south and west Africa. ANCIR uses its resources to strengthen newsrooms’ own internal capacity, by providing access to the world’s best whistleblower encryption and investigative semantic analysis technologies, as well as skills development, and seed grants for cross-border collaboration.
At CfA, we don’t just accept difference – we celebrate it, we support it, and we thrive on it for the benefit of our employees, our products and our community. CfA is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.
To all recruitment agencies: CfA does not accept agency resumes. Please do not forward resumes to our jobs alias, CfA employees or any other company location. CfA is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes.