The winning projects of the seventh edition of the Fifth Power media hackathon have been launched

Journalists and media consumers have four new tools to interact with each other. The winning teams of the seventh edition of the Fifth Power media hackathon, organized by the Independent Journalism Center on June 25 to 27, 2021, finalized their projects and made them available to the general public.

The mission of the four teams – CU SENS, Moldova.org, TV8, and NewsMaker – was to create online tools that would allow them to interact effectively with media consumers. As a result, the Virtual Parliament, a news aggregator, a map of public money spending, and a bot, which allow readers to quickly find out about the most important domestic news, were developed.

In the following paragraphs we shall present the four winning projects, and the developing teams will explain the importance and usefulness of the tools in communication with the audience.

The editorial team of CU SENS produced the Virtual Parliament, which is an interactive platform for monitoring the work of the 101 Members of the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova, elected on July 11, 2021. The platform is a virtual meeting room that provides information about each MP: the party they belong to, where their seats are located, who their neighbors in the meeting room are, etc. By clicking on an MP’s chair, the reader opens a window with brief information about that MP. Each MP has a profile with a photo, a short biography, and a CV. The team collected, processed and uploaded to the platform data obtained from authorities through information requests and from official databases. The team managed to obtain 91 CVs and 101 income statements out of 101. Also, the outlet’s journalists produced 94 video interviews with MPs, which will be placed on the new platform.

“The Virtual Parliament is, in fact, an aggregator of public data about the 101 Members of the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova. We collect information from several databases managed by public authorities. Thus, we outline the profiles of the people’s elected representatives and present them in an interactive form, so that the public can find out relevant information about the MPs’ professional experience, their wealth and interests. We index documents and present links. By browsing the platform, the public can see who is the richest MP or which MP has the most modest wealth. At the same time, our followers can judge the work of the people’s elected representatives, awarding them grades,” said Olga Ceaglei, co-founder of CU SENS.

The editorial team of Moldova.org aimed to help media consumers pay attention to the information content of the media platforms they access. For this purpose, they created the aggregator News from Moldova, which is the first aggregator to give priority to the websites that respect professional ethics and deontology. The new resource works based on the score given by Media Radar, the IJC’s platform for monitoring and evaluation of media portals. Thus, the users of News from Moldova platform will see first the articles published by media outlets that comply with the Journalist’ Code of Conduct, which are selected according to the score obtained following periodic monitoring carried out by Media Radar. News from Moldova places on the first positions the articles published on the media platforms which, as a result of the Media Radar monitoring, obtained a score higher than 36 points, meaning that the portal meets all the minimum credibility criteria described in the monitoring methodology. However, any user will be able to manually select the media portals they are interested in, even if they have a lower score, and they will be informed by clear visual elements and warning messages about the risks of consuming news produced by the media that have not passed the “integrity test”. 

“Moldova.org created a tool that helps people who do not have access to media education navigate through the tons of information published by online media platforms. In addition, it is the first aggregator that works against the websites that distribute fake news and deliver propaganda or misinformation. We hope, with the help of colleagues from responsible outlets, to promote this aggregator enough that it reaches everyone who really needs it,” said Ana Gherciu, the executive director of Moldova.org.

The editorial team of TV8 created a platform where citizens can follow the public tenders organized in Moldova. The Public Money Spending Map shows information about the money used in each district of the country in the first 11 months of 2021 for public procurement. To provide greater clarity, the team also made two separate maps, one for mayors’ offices and one for medical institutions. In addition to the information displayed, users can track the money spent by a public institution by subscribing to alerts. Thus, subscribers will receive information about the tenders organized by the local mayor’s office, school, or district hospital. Moreover, if a reader finds an illegality, they can notify the journalists of TV8, who will investigate the situation. Also, the users who will subscribe to alerts will receive information from the M-Tender platform, developed by the Ministry of Finance.

“By creating the Public Money Spending Map, we wanted the citizens, readers/viewers of TV8, and not only, to be active, to get involved in the life of their communities, become true whistleblowers, and help us keep an eye on the public money. We tried to create a bridge between journalists and media consumers, because this tool allows users to subscribe to the tenders organized by a certain institution, but also to notify us if they notice possible illegalities,” said Cristina Straton, one of the authors of the project.

The team of NewsMaker created the NM-Waiter bot, which allows readers to quickly receive information of good quality. The new chatbot NM-Waiter helps readers find out about the latest events and the most important news on three most popular platforms: Telegram, Viber, and Facebook Messenger. The chatbot allows users to select the information they are interested in. NM-Waiter works in two languages: users select the preferred language, then the section they need, such as politics, economy, justice, or news about the pandemic. The chatbot shows five latest news stories. If the reader is interested in any of them, they can go to the website and read details. The functionality of the chatbot will be improved with the addition of new features, such as reactions from readers or the option to receive the NM Espresso newsletter directly on the Messenger.

“The multi-platform bot NM-Waiter has been developed by the editorial team of NewsMaker to facilitate their interaction with users. The bot allows readers to choose the latest news on topics of interest to them or search for them among the materials published on the NewsMaker website. In addition, the bot allows readers to receive feedback from the NewsMaker team by clicking on the ‘Contact editors’ button. Due to this, the team has already made several materials based on the stories of our readers,” said Nicolai Paholnitchi, one of the authors of the project.

The four projects were developed within the seventh edition of the Fifth Power media hackathon, organized by the Independent Journalism Center as part of the “Media Enabling Democracy, Inclusion and Accountability in Moldova” (MEDIA-M) project, funded by USAID and UK and implemented by Internews in Moldova.