Mozambique Newspaper Monitors Polling Places With New Citizen Reporting Tool

By: Kendall McCabe | 07/12/2013

The editorial team at Mozambique's @Verdade newspaper is gearing up to report on the country's municipal elections in November and national elections next year. With 2,500 polling stations across the country to monitor, it’s a tough job for any newsroom, and especially for @Verdade’s, which has just an 11-person editorial staff.

That's where an innovative citizen reporter network comes into play.

For the first time ever, citizens are helping @Verdade to report on the election process. They’re using Citizen Desk, a new toolkit that helps news organizations incorporate citizen journalism into their work online or in print. With Citizen Desk, @Verdade can collect, verify, reward and publish reports sent by citizens through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and SMS.

Citizens are helping to answer questions such as: Are polling places open? Are officials present and voters free of intimidation? Is the equipment functioning correctly?

During the elections, @Verdade will use Citizen Desk to monitor various information feeds, verify the information, save notes in a contact database and then choose the best content and include it in dynamic, live articles.

Citizen Desk is one of 20 winners of the 2012 African News Innovation Challenge contest (ANIC), designed to encourage experimentation in digital technologies and support the best innovations designed to strengthen African news organizations. The contest, modeled on the Knight News Challenge, was launched by the African Media Initiative under the leadership of ICFJ Knight International Journalism Fellow Justin Arenstein.

Read the full post on IJNet.

The International Journalists' Network, IJNet, keeps professional and citizen journalists up to date on the latest media innovations, online journalism resources, training opportunities and expert advice. ICFJ produces IJNet in seven languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, Persian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. IJNet is supported by donors including the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Image courtesy of Flickr user sjcockell under a Creative Commons license.

News Category

Program News

Topics

Critical-Issues Reporting

Latest News

ICFJ Statement on African News Innovation Challenge

From 2012 to 2014, the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) worked in partnership with the African Media Initiative (AMI) to manage programs aimed at helping African media and media support outlets to improve the quality of their journalism, their use of technology, and their financial sustainability. Among these programs was the African News Innovation Challenge (ANIC), with its digital innovation lab, which provided grants and mentoring to organizations with the best ideas for finding technological solutions for news gathering and dissemination.

U.S. Ethnic and Indigenous Media Play Critical Role in Countering Disinformation, New ICFJ Study Finds

While political disinformation is surging across the United States, one part of the news media is proving especially resilient in stopping the spread of false information – ethnic and Indigenous newsrooms, according to a new study by the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ).

ICFJ+ and Project C to Map Standout News Creators Worldwide

There are a lot of talented news creators out there doing compelling journalistic work. But finding them can be hard. That’s why ICFJ+ and Project C are teaming up to launch regional lists of news creators to watch across the globe. The goal is simple: surface and elevate news creators who are building deep relationships with loyal audiences across newsletters, video, podcasts, social media, and more.