Position in: Tanzania
Do you want to help fight misinformation and online hate speech?
Code for Africa (CfA) has an immediate vacancy for a full-time fact-checker and WanaData fellow in Tanzania to join our PesaCheck team.
The position is a short-term role for three months, with the possibility of conversation into a permanent full-time position.
Candidates must have demonstrable journalistic or investigative research experience, and excellent writing skills. Data analysis or data literacy will be a strong advantage.
PesaCheck is a pan-African initiative incubated by Code for Africa (CfA) that researches and debunks misinformation and ‘toxic speech’, such as hate speech, published both online and elsewhere in more traditional media. It also tracks promises by public officials and shines a light on public finances to ensure the public is not misled.
WanaData is CfA’s pan-African women data science/storytelling initiative, that seeks to amplify women’s voices and influence in national discourse by boosting the use of data-driven analysis and digital storytelling on socio-economic issues.
The successful candidates will initially work as part of PesaCheck’s multinational and multilingual team in 15 African countries, using digital collaboration tools to create content for a global audience and international media partners. They will also contribute towards transnational research and reporting projects on issues ranging from human trafficking and climate resilience, to organised crime and the political economy.
Required: minimum requirements include:
- An eye for factual accuracy, and a nose for news.
- Proven experience in journalism, and/or digital investigations with precision writing skills.
- Familiarity with digital verification/fact-checking techniques and tools.
- Obsessive attention to detail, with excellent numeracy and analytical skills.
- Ability to unpack complex issues, explaining them in ways that any audience can understand.
- Ability to work in a fast-paced multimedia newsroom and meet tight deadlines.
- Excellent written and verbal skills.
- Critical thinking skills.
Preferred: candidates who are able to demonstrate the following will have an advantage:
- 2+ years of work experience.
- Experience working in transnational multilingual digital newsrooms.
- Experience with digital collaboration tools, including Slack and Google Drive.
- Experience using social media as a source for news leads.
- Data literacy and/or data journalism experience.
- A demonstrable understanding of public (government) finance management/budget processes.
Language and Location Requirements:
- Location: Tanzania
- Languages: English, Kiswahili
About the Role:
The successful candidates will join PesaCheck’s transnational fact-checking team and the WanaData network of coordinators. The team is responsible for helping the public separate fact from fiction, using a range of journalistic techniques and digital verification tools, and share her knowledge with CfA’s network of women data scientists and journalists..
You will join PesaCheck’s editorial newsdesk, working as part of a network of locally-based fact-checkers in nine African countries (growing to 15 countries by the end of 2020). You will produce daily fact-check articles, investigating questionable content on social media, in mainstream media and utterances/claims by public figures. You will also, from time to time, collaborate with PesaCheck media partners and/or CfA’s digital innovation teams on election monitoring or other special projects.
The fact-checks you produce will be published on Pesacheck.org, while also being syndicated into partner media. The articles will be used by Facebook and other technology platforms to help detect misinformation on social media.
The WanaData content will be published on WanaData.africa, as well as on CfA’s network of media partners.
Responsibilities: Your daily responsibilities will include:
- Proactively monitoring a variety of local/regional public sources, ranging from mainstream media to social media and chat apps, to detect possible instances of misleading or malign content (such as hate speech).
- Analysing selected public statements/manuscripts for factual errors, logical flaws, and/or significant omissions to determine whether PesaCheck should classify the content as misinformation or as another form of misleading or malign content.
- Examining the sources mentioned in selected public statements/manuscripts and, where necessary, identifying additional documents and/or sources to help determine whether PesaCheck should classify the content as misinformation or as another form of misleading or malign content.
- Producing ‘explainer articles’ that outline why a specific public statement/manuscript has been classified as misinformation or another form of malign content. Your articles will be based on substantive desktop research and interviews, accurately distilling relevant information into explanations that are easily understandable by ‘everyman’ audiences, and that are substantiated by tangible evidence.
- Proactively coordinate meet-ups with the WanaData community in Dar es Salaam, in cooperation with the Data Academy team
- Support and supervise the creation of stories and the expansion of the WanaData community in Tanzania, leveraging the network of partners maintained by the Data Academy team
How to apply:Please fill in this form: https://bit.ly/35AoeKv by 31 October 2020.