MatchNews

Inspiration

In 2018, the term “Fake News” became popular in Brazilian politics, mainly because of the elections that took place in that year. Anyone with internet access had access to fake news and discussions about. It is known that some candidates for the presidency of Brazil were favored by the dissemination of false news, whether intentional or not. This is not an exclusively Brazilian problem since, in a study, Allcott and Gentzkow (2017) found that in the 2016 elections there was a lot of sharing of “Fake News” favoring candidate Donald Trump, who ended up being the candidate elected that year. False news also have an effect in the financial market. That happens because the financial market follows the news, and when this news is false (or pretentious) the result can be negative, mainly because of the herd effect. A famous case is the “Joesley Day”, which took place in 2017, where an audio of then president, Michel Temer was leaked giving the guarantee to buy the silence of former deputy Eduardo Cunha, who was imprisoned for corruption. Investors were desperate about the president's resignation and the market sank. The news was not false, but was purposely used to profit in the financial market by buying the dollar. The profit from the leak was approximately $100 million. Controlling the dissemination of "Fake News" is a great challenge because often this false information is shared on social media, in groups and closed profiles, where it is difficult to access.

What it does

Our app features an innovative methodology to identify false news and share truthful and reliable news. It uses gamification to provide a fun atmosphere and encourage the user's good mood. In this way, critical evaluation of news of all kinds becomes more intuitive and enjoyable. It helps the user to learn to identify fake news in a relaxed way.

How we built it

At the time of ideation, the team's first step was to analyze the available themes and agree on the project that would be developed. After planning how the project would be and dividing tasks, still in a group, we outlined how the application's screens would be. After that, a team member was responsible for the research related to the project theme, a second team member was responsible for the application design (the vectors used were made in Illustrator) and screen prototyping in Adobe XD and the last two, by programming in Android Studio. For this project we use the Java programming language.

Challenges we ran into

The biggest challenge faced by the team was the complexity of the topic dealt with. There were already projects related to the solution of the problem proposed by the theme. However, none of these projects solve the problem in its entirety. Even with this pressure imposed by the chosen theme, we decided to use a common passion of all team members, games.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud to work on a solution to a problem ingrained in our society that affects every person's daily life. As Brazilians, during the Covid-19 pandemic (which we still live in daily) we were able to realize how much false news was decisive for the catastrophic situation in which we are inserted. So, thinking about fighting this problem left us motivated and proud. We embrace the goal of not allowing more lives to be affected by incorrect information.

What we learned

This challenge somehow made us see a lot about our own country. We learn about critical thinking and the consequences of misinformation. This made us reflect too much on the pollution of false information that hovers over the globe and, also, on how difficult it is to deal with it. Speaking of technical knowledge, the challenge helped us to improve programming and design techniques with the tools used.

What's next for MatchNews

The next steps of the project consist of adding the business plan and financial incentive, finishing the development of some of the prototype screens, and creating marketing strategies to reach the app's target audience.