That’s why we will be live today Friday the 2nd at 13:00 h (CET) on the Maldita Twitch channel, where we will broadcast a special program with our founders Clara Jiménez Cruz and Julio Montes and where we are waiting for you to talk about how we work and how we built this non-profit media outlet thanks to you. You can also take a look at all the resources prepared by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) for this celebration day for all fact-checkers.
Do you know how to make torrijas? There will be surprises!
The year of the 'infodemic': many hoaxes and little data
The pandemic arrived and with it came the biggest wave of disinformation we have seen at Maldita.es. More disinformation than ever and more dangerous than ever. We have seen how influencers with millions of followers recommended prophylactic practices against COVID-19 that could directly put your health at risk, and hundreds of hoaxes in the form of audios, chains and videos that have generated more uncertainty than there already was.
As we say, at Maldita.es we have debunked more than 1,000 of that disinformation, a figure we would not have reached without malditas and malditos alerting us through our WhatsApp about all the hoaxes you have received (+34 644 22 93 19). If you know someone who you think might also be interested, pass them our number so that we can be more and more in the fight against lies.
In addition to lies, during the year of the pandemic we have encountered many blanks in the data. The administrations have been publishing data in an irregular, incomplete and uncoordinated way and that has made our job of explaining what was happening more difficult.
Even so, we have published things such as the composition of the de-escalation committee that the Government refused to reveal or our municipal-level coronavirus case map for all of Spain (information that after a year of the pandemic we continue updating every week) and our team has made an effort to obtain the necessary information to understand the development of the pandemic.
The year of science, alliances and awards
This has also been a year in which we have worked hand in hand with many fact-checker colleagues from around the world. Collaboration is key to stopping lies and this year we have made a global alliance: more than 100 fact-checkers in 70 countries speaking 45 different languages have managed to debunk more than 9,000 hoaxes (and we have been nominated for the Nobel Prize!). If you want to dive into the data you have it all here.
At the beginning of the pandemic, when the first wave was hitting countries such as Spain, France or Italy hard, Maldita.es and four other European fact-checking media outlets joined forces to analyze whether the infodemic wave was crossing borders. In the report COVID-19 Infodemic in Europe: a visual analysis of disinformation carried out by Maldita.es in Spain, Agence France-Presse (AFP) in France, CORRECTIV in Germany, Pagella Politica/Facta in Italy and Full Fact in the United Kingdom, we examined the articles published by these media during March and April 2020.
In addition, from Maldita Ciencia, in order to face all the disinformation generated by the pandemic, we have signed collaboration agreements with different medical and scientific societies and associations that have participated in debunks related to this issue.
All this hard work has received recognition: Maldita Ciencia has won the Premio Prismas de la Casa de la Ciencia of A Coruña and the Premio Concha García Campoy of the Television Academy. In addition, our CEO and co-founder, Clara Jiménez Cruz, received the award from the Madrid Press Association as young journalist of the year.
BECOME A MALDITO, BECOME A MALDITA
Do you want to know more about disinformation and verification?
As you know, we are convinced that education is the only vaccine against disinformation, so we want to leave you here some of our resources and others so we can all keep learning together:
Course to combat disinformation on Twitter: Learn to verify in 21 tweets
With the support of Twitter Spain we have prepared a micro-course to learn how to combat disinformation. Organized into 21 tweets and a single thread you can learn to detect a false tweet, identify a phishing attempt and also understand how cognitive biases affect critical thinking (we also have it in English).
A comic with the keys so that you are not fooled
“Héctor Hecho no comparte bulos” is the Spanish title of a comic produced by the Brazilian fact-checking center Aos Fatos, in association with the International Fact-Checking Network of the Poynter Institute. The Spanish edition is published by Maldita.es and you can download it for free here.
Interland: Be Internet Awesome
The adventure game, developed by Google, is aimed at younger audiences (7-12 years old) who learn to combat the bad behavior of impersonators and other users who do not practice healthy digital coexistence. Interland also promotes some basic principles of verification: it encourages checking sources and URLs and reporting inappropriate content.
Crash Course Media Literacy
A series of videos (recommended from secondary school onwards) that address fundamental topics for media literacy (in English).
In addition, in the EDUCHeck MAP of the International Fact-checking Network you can find more resources in other languages.
To close, always the maldito team
Rocío Benavente, MALDITA CIENCIA: This year has been the perfect storm for fact-checkers, and especially for those specialized in science, with health becoming the main protagonist of current affairs and developments happening at great speed mixed with a high degree of polarization. Since we are literally playing with public health right now, it has been more important than ever to be clear about which information was reliable and which was not, and at Maldita Ciencia we have been there trying to help.
Andrés Jiménez MacKellar, MALDITO BULO: The uncertainty, fear and lack of answers that we have all felt at some point during this last year has meant that hoaxes about COVID-19 have not stopped circulating since the beginning of the pandemic. At Maldita.es we have detected more than 1,000 pieces of disinformation related to vaccines, alleged methods of preventing contagion, the political management of the pandemic or even phishing, which would not have been possible if the community had not alerted us to those hoaxes and helped to make our debunks go viral.
Sergio Sangiao, MALDITO DATO: The pandemic caused by the coronavirus has brought with it an avalanche of disinformation. From Maldito Dato we have been holding Governments and Public Administrations accountable so that they would not fool you: verifying what our politicians said, checking and analyzing data to tell you what was happening and making Transparency requests to reveal what we still did not know. And that is how we will continue!
Óscar Pandiello, MALDITA TECNOLOGÍA: After a year in which screens have become our window to reality, knowing the ins and outs, the dangers and the latest developments related to the digital world has become a necessity. Issues such as privacy and the protection of our personal data, the normalization of artificial intelligence or the stress derived from excessive use of technological devices concern us and, for that reason, we will continue working so that the digital world becomes more accessible to you every day.
Nacho Calle, DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF MALDITA.ES: Verified facts and data. More than ever, in these last months, we have all needed verified facts and data. We needed to know what was happening, what information our leaders had and whether what they were telling us was true. It has been a long-distance race and at Maldita.es we have put all our effort into explaining what was happening around us, putting into context the figures and details of a global problem such as the coronavirus pandemic and demanding public information that was not being offered transparently. A year in which verification has consolidated itself as the best tool so that we are not fooled. Not even in extraordinary situations. Not even in a pandemic.
David Fernández, HEAD OF ENGINEERING: If at any moment technology has been important in our lives it has been during 2020. We replaced hugging our family and friends with seeing them through a screen, we stopped going to office counters to handle everything with our digital certificate, we lost the five minutes of morning coffee with our coworkers to start talking to them via WhatsApp, Telegram or Slack. Machines, in short, replacing what used to be more human contact.
In times of uncertainty technology can help us with many things: to be closer to our loved ones, to allow us to carry out necessary procedures… To be better informed. And that is what we try to do at Maldita.es: not only prevent you from being fooled but also give you simple tools so that checking whether something is false or not is as easy as possible. Our WhatsApp bot or our browser extension are examples. And it is something we worked hard on last year and will continue working on this year (and the next, and the next, and the next…).
Beatriz Lara, MALDITA COMUNIDAD: This has been the year in which disinformation has spread with greater force and speed because of the coronavirus pandemic, but it has also been the year in which our work fighting disinformation has had the greatest impact: millions of people around the world have read and shared our verifications. Work that would not have been possible without our community, which is growing every day. During 2020, more and more malditos have helped us by lending us their superpowers, financially contributing so that Maldita.es can grow and be stronger, reach faster and further in the fight against disinformation; reading our newsletters, watching our Twitch streams and participating in our workshops to learn to debunk hoaxes themselves. Without them, none of this would have been possible and they have shown us that together it is much harder for them to fool us.
Stéphane M. Grueso, MALDITA EDUCA: This year has been quite a challenge. We have delivered more talks and training sessions than ever and in a very complicated context in which disinformation can literally kill you. In short, I think that at Maldita Educa we have learned more than we have taught. Disinformation seems to be here to stay. At Maldita.es we are willing to fight it with all our strength and to offer you tools so that you can do so too.
Pablo Hernández, ACADEMIC RESEARCH: For us this has been a memorable year because it is the year of our birth. We arrived with many challenges ahead and much to learn hand in hand with academics who study disinformation. This year we have been very attentive to their research on the infodemic, that avalanche of hoaxes related to COVID-19.
Carlos Hernández-Echevarría, PUBLIC POLICY AND INSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT: The pandemic has brought an unprecedented avalanche of hoaxes that has forced us to explain better and better what we do. It has highlighted the importance of Maldita.es’ work and has given us the opportunity to help many institutions better understand how disinformation works and what they can do to help in the fight against it.
Thank you all for being there one more year!
Remember that today we will see each other at Maldita Twitchería, https://www.twitch.tv/malditaes, at 13:00 h (CET), to continue celebrating International Fact-Checking Day!
On our WhatsApp chatbot we are always on alert: write to us at +34 644 22 93 19 and ask us whether something you have received is or is not a hoax.
Together it is harder for them to fool us!