The Francophonie chooses CheckFirst again to run ODIL

The Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, a international body gathering 88 governments and states, chose once more CheckFirst to operate the platform, as well as create engaging content for fact-checkers, researchers and public bodies.

While the number of initiatives to fight disinformation continues to grow around the world, fake news in non-English language are still proliferating on social media platforms. Since 2020, Check First has been working for the OIF to create ODIL, the Francophone platform for initiatives tackling disinformation. ODIL has been identifying, highlighting and connecting initiatives tackling disinformation in the Francophonie.

Check First is proud to continue this collaboration with the OIF by being in charge of the technical infrastructure of the platform and creating brand new features and improvements for the platform.

Gathering, exposing, collaborating

CheckFirst started to map the initiatives 2 years ago, before ODIL became a public platform. To date, ODIL publicly gathers 70+ initiatives tackling disinformation in the Francophonie. Not only they are fact-checkers, but also tools creators, researchers and media and information literacy stakeholders gathered in the same platform. This allows for getting both visibility of each one’s work and inspiration from others on the platform.

The list is meant to be growing! In 2023, ODIL will continue to follow these initiatives and give them a special place among their co-workers in the field. If you know of a French-speaking initiative tackling misinformation, come and tell us about it!

Visibility

The work of some of Francophone initiatives tackling disinformation was highlighted in the series ODIL, Le podcast. 9 episodes, 7 different countries, 13 voices and almost 4h30 of discussions about their techniques, challenges, failure and lessons. By exposing these various points of view, ODIL, le podcast reflects the richness and diversity of the French-speaking world and of those who work towards the same goal: guaranteeing access to true and reliable information.

CheckFirst will have the pleasure to produce ODIL, Le Podcast season 2! Stay tuned as we will released new episodes at the beginning of 2023 and feature new stakeholders …

Connexion

By gathering all those initiatives, ODIL has brought initiatives together on several topics. The platform has also been at the core of the dissemination of the OIF‘s calls for proposals, especially on the project of « collaboration between Francophone initiatives tackling disinformation » in October 2021. This enabled to fund collaborative projects between several stakeholders.

The connexion between initiatives is also reinforced by the fact that each one can easily contact another thanks to the same secure and encrypted messaging app dedicated to users who signed in to be registered. Created in 2021, CheckFirst is trying to make it a forum for everyone who is registered in the website.

ODIL is also a resource for the field’s stakeholders. In 2022, an index of public policies countering disinformation in the Francophonie was created to compare and analyse how Francophone countries were fighting disinformation within their borders. In a weekly newsletter #Lu, ODIL gathers and summarizes the last French-speaking news on the fight against disinformation (articles, events, conferences, studies) …

In 2023, Check First will be responsible for developing new content on the platform: expect more videos but also trainings with our partners dedicated to tackling disinformation.