Positions in: Ethiopia
Do you want to help fight misinformation and online hate speech?
Do you want to help fight misinformation and online hate speech? Code for Africa (CfA) is recruiting fact-checkers in Ethiopia to join our PesaCheck team.
The positions are immediately available. Candidates must have demonstrable journalistic and investigative research experience and excellent writing skills. Applicants fluent in Oromo, Tigrinya and/or Amharic will have an advantage.
PesaCheck is a pan-African initiative incubated by Code for Africa (CfA) that researches and debunks misinformation 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.
The successful candidates will work as part of a multinational and multilingual team using digital collaboration tools to create content for a global audience and international media partners.
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:
- 5+ 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: Ethiopia
- Languages: English plus at least one of: Oromo, Tigrinya, Amharic
About the Role:
The successful candidates will join PesaCheck’s transnational fact-checking team. The team is responsible for helping the public separate fact from fiction, using a range of journalistic techniques and digital verification tools.
You will join PesaCheck’s editorial newsdesk, working as part of a network of locally-based investigative researchers in 12 African countries. 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 Code for Africa’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.
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.
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 workplace, with a transnational team, occasional international travel, and generous vacation benefits.
- Ongoing opportunities to learn new cutting-edge skills and techniques/technologies to future-proof yourself in a rapidly evolving industry.
- A chance to shine on a global stage, writing for international audiences and interacting with colleagues around the world.
How to apply:
Please fill in this form by 15 April 2021
About Us:
Code for Africa (CfA) is the continent’s largest network of independent civic technology and data journalism laboratories, which build digital democracy solutions that give citizens unfettered access to actionable information that empowers them to make informed decisions, and that strengthens civic engagement for improved public governance and accountability.
This includes building infrastructures 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 differences – 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 employment application line, CfA employees or any other CfA contact. CfA is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes.