Inspiration
Disinformation and propaganda have always plagued democracy. Media, being the fourth pillar of democracy, has the power to deliver information directly to the citizens. With this immense power comes a great responsibility to the media. They must deliver facts, give equal chances to all the diverse voices in a democracy and stay free from governmental control and censorship. But as we know, media (especially the big TV news channels) in India is increasingly becoming unreliable. That's where the inspiration for this project came. Now, it is virtually impossible to flag unreliable information on TV via a third party. But what I can do is create a chrome extension that can help users in deciding whether to trust a media outlet or not.
What it will do
My chrome extension basically looks at the websites the user is visiting and searches through its database. If it finds a match, then it provides ownership information of that particular media outlet. Along with this information, the extension also provides information about potential issues if that particular media outlet has spread fake news in the past. With all this information, the user can decide whether to trust the source or not.
How I will build it
Although the project is still an idea and I haven't created anything concrete until this point, I plan to use HTML, CSS, JavaScript and Python to create this extension in the future.
Challenges I ran into
The major challenge is to create a database of news outlets along with their owners. I have found a credible source for this data from Reporters Without Borders at Media Ownership Monitor but I couldn't find any API for this data. That means I would have to manually log all the data. That is going to be a tedious task. Another challenge is that the Media Ownership Monitor data only contains the popular news outlets in India. So I would need more research to exhaustively cover all the media outlets - big and small.
Accomplishments that I am proud of
I am proud of taking on this task. I always wanted to do something with the help of tech in the field of journalism and I think this is the perfect opportunity.
What I learned
I am learning a lot about media (especially news media) and how it affects people and democracy. I am learning about the systems (or lack thereof) put in place to prevent media from straying from its path. I know this project will deal with sensitive topics but I am ready to tackle all of those topics.
What's next for Media Informer
I would love to turn this small idea into a fully functional working piece of code. I am looking forward to developing this chrome extension and maybe even putting it on the Chrome Web Store.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.