This year has been intense: it began in the middle of a crowdfunding campaign (we will never get tired of thanking you for the support you gave us), we launched Maldita Migración and Maldito Feminismo, and we have had no fewer than five electoral events in which the entire Maldita.es team has rolled up its sleeves.
We have published almost 1,000 debunks (929) and made 552 requests for information through the Transparency Law (and with them we have surpassed 1,000 information requests in these two years). We close the year by thanking you for collaborating in the battle against disinformation, because without you our work would make no sense.
The Maldita Community in figures
We started January fully focused on the #FundaMaldita crowdfunding campaign, in which more than 1,600 malditos and malditas took part. At that time we were just over 8,000 and we ended the year surpassing 20,000 registered malditos and malditas.
Of all of you, 450 have decided to take a step further and get involved in the fight against hoaxes with your superpowers, the expert knowledge and skills that we do not have, because we cannot know everything! With your help we have debunked and contextualised almost thirty pieces of disinformation.
Not only those who collaborated with #FundaMaldita have contributed to financially sustaining our work, but a total of 687 ambassadors and ambassadors who defend with their financial support that Maldita.es remains an independent, non-profit outlet.
Maldita Educa: against disinformation, education
We have always been convinced of the great tool that education is in the fight against disinformation. Sharing our knowledge is one of the reasons why we are a civil society organisation and not a company.
With the launch of Maldita Educa, the educational platform of Maldita.es, we wanted to reach educational centres and civil society, media, Public Administration and companies. This year Maldita Educa has delivered 90 courses, talks and workshops in Spain and 10 internationally in countries such as Brazil, Ecuador, Germany or South Africa, where we have shared our methodology, tools and philosophy to awaken critical awareness among all actors in society.
5 electoral campaigns in one year
April, May, October, November... Practically four months of this year we have dedicated to combating disinformation during electoral campaigns, fact-checking candidates’ debates and following vote counts and election night battles. A team effort in which Maldito Dato and Maldito Bulo have given us the tools so that politicians do not fool you and you can vote without hoaxes.
As we knew that many hoaxes circulate during the day of reflection, for 28A we organised an Emergency Hoax Team dedicated to live fact-checking throughout the entire day of reflection the hoaxes and lies of the campaign. On 9N we decided to take the Emergency Hoax Team out onto the streets so that you could see how we work fact-checking live everything that reaches us.
Collaboration to fight lies
This year’s elections have also been an opportunity to build bridges with other colleagues, as we did with Comprobado, the union of 16 Spanish media outlets coordinated by Maldita.es to fight disinformation and political lies in the 28A elections. In addition, fact-checkers from 13 countries joined together with FactCheck EU, an initiative to combat disinformation and fake news in the European Parliament elections on 26 May.
These have not been the only collaborations we have carried out with other media: every day we continue on Julia en la Onda (Onda Cero) catching up on hoaxes and the archive, we are every Saturday on No es un día cualquiera (RNE) talking about the Maldita Week, you can read us debunking political falsehoods in El Detector on eldiario.es and we have collaborated during the different electoral events with Telemadrid and RTVE.
Recognition of our work
In our eagerness to share, we love that other organisations look at our work and are inspired by it: Politifact spent three weeks studying our community model and the Fundación Pluralismo y Convivencia has supported us to carry out an investigation into hoaxes affecting religious minorities and the hate speech they fuel.
Our work has also been recognised through several awards that endorse our approach in addressing the battle against disinformation: Maldita.es was selected by Telefónica and the magazine Compromiso Empresarial as one of the best initiatives in the use of transparency and good governance. Maldita Ciencia was awarded by the Fundación Antama for its outreach work and Maldita Migración received the distinction of social commitment at the Premios Afrosocialistas. The work of our co-founder Clara Jiménez Cruz has also been recognised with her appointment as Ashoka Fellow 2019, an independent non-profit foundation specialised in social entrepreneurship that considers that Maldita.es “inspires and empowers others to transform their communities and society”.
But our greatest recognition is the thousands of people who read us every day, who share our debunks and thus ensure that the truth travels further than lies. Also the malditos and malditas who are part of the Maldita.es community, who lend their superpowers to fight disinformation and who become ambassadors to protect our independence as a non-profit outlet. With your support, we turn two years old and we want to turn three, five, ten... Always together, because that way it is much harder for them to fool us.