A look back at some of Meedan’s latest election projects
We share findings from recent election work in Mexico, Brazil and the United States, as well as an update on war response efforts in Lebanon.
Hey Checklisters,
With December just around the corner, we’re taking a moment to reflect on a handful of election projects from June to the present.
If you’re running late, here’s your TL;DR Checklist:
✅ We just wrapped up most of our major election projects for the year.
✅ We’ve got election insights from Mexico, Brazil, and the United States.
✅ Our war response efforts in Lebanon have included collaborations with 7 newsrooms and advocacy groups.
Top Comment
As December rapidly approaches, election operations at Meedan are winding down for the year. We said from the beginning that 2024 was set to be the year of elections, and as a record-setting number of voters visited their polls across the world, we’re continuing to puzzle out what we can learn about where global information ecosystems are headed in the coming years. Here, we revisit Mexico’s historic election to share new insights and a full report. We also share initial thoughts following the conclusion of our most recent election projects in Brazil and the United States.
A look back at Mexico’s historic presidential election
It’s been a few months now since Claudia Sheinbaum won Mexico’s presidential election, becoming the first woman ever to hold this position in the country’s history. During the election period, Mexico’s federal election agency, the National Electoral Institute (INE), worked with Animal Político, AFP México, and Telemundo to use Check for an extensive fact-checking and informational campaign.
By the time the election was over, the INE tipline had received 6,940 queries that we could use to better understand the situation on the ground.
Mexican citizens predominantly searched for information about the electoral process and the required documents for voting. There were also many questions from voters asking about how to find their polling locations. Fewer requests were sent to the tipline about rumors or misinformation, but a handful of such topics did gain traction for tipline users. One especially pernicious rumor left voters worried INE was providing them with erasable pens. Another claim suggested that Mexicans living abroad were not eligible to vote, a patent falsehood.
Brazilian municipal elections and the road to 2026
During October’s local elections, voters in more than 5,000 cities throughout Brazil cast their ballots amid an increasingly polarized national context. We worked with Pacto pela Democracia and 12 of its highly active member organizations to form the Confia coalition, an effort to analyze disinformation related to electoral contests.
Shortly after the final round of voting was completed, we dove into the data and worked with our partners to give readers a snapshot of some of the key themes that dominated Brazil’s information ecosystems — and our tiplines — during the election. One major finding worth sharing: The most commonly referenced theme on our tiplines was election integrity, with almost 50% of all the verification requests on this topic being focused specifically on voting machines.
Deceptive content in the US presidential election
This year, Meedan worked with more than 30 media, fact-checking, and civil society organizations to track rumors and misleading claims surrounding the U.S. election. Several partners used Check to operate tiplines on WhatsApp and Messenger, and throughout the election cycle, queries from these channels helped to inform their research and reporting topics.
Through these efforts, we saw that time-tested misinformation tactics — such as decontextualizing real media or mischaracterizing official documents — were still the most prevalent methods for deceiving viewers, while fantastical AI-generated imagery played a role in manipulating individuals’ feelings and emotions.
We also learned that rumors about noncitizens voting were persistent and pervasive, and our tiplines experienced a surge of fabricated headlines and content drawing parallels between right-wing politicians in the U.S. and abroad.
We’ll have more to share about this in the near future, so stay tuned to our blog.
Our war response efforts in Lebanon
In September, Meedan launched an emergency response fund for Lebanon. Since then, we’ve worked alongside media and civil society organizations — including existing network partners — to support their efforts and further bolster their ability to provide critical information for their communities.
With the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire taking effect this morning local time, we keep an eye on Gaza and continue to call, alongside international human rights organizations, for an immediate cessation of all hostilities in Palestine and Israel.
Open-source intelligence (OSINT) skills and analysis
On-the-ground reporters and journalists from The Legal Agenda have been collaborating with the NAWA Media team to produce in-depth investigations supported by OSINT analysis of footage concerning violent attacks and human rights violations in Lebanon.
Critical, trusted reporting in local communities
The Public Source, an award-winning publication dedicated to in-depth long-form investigative journalism, has been creating reports and photo essays as part of its special coverage of the war.
Awan Media, a platform that provides both analysis and reporting, has been producing multimedia content from Lebanon and building a special tracker page to collate important data, including casualties of health care workers and journalists.
Sifr, a media platform and online magazine specializing in economic and social reporting, has been producing multimedia content, infographics, and translations of key texts related to the war.
Expanding the resources available to underserved groups
The Anti-Racism Movement, a grassroots collective of feminists who organize alongside migrants, has been providing emergency shelter and essential services to migrant workers in Lebanon.
Omgyno, a social enterprise that focuses on supporting sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR), has been providing emergency services to migrant women in Lebanon and those displaced due to the war.
At Meedan, we see our efforts as an extension of the Gaza media response initiative we launched in 2023. With our collaborators at SMEX, 7amleh and WITNESS, we initiated a series of activities in response to the war, including producing Gaza Media Resources, an open-access tool kit for fact-checkers, OSINT investigators, journalists, and human rights defenders involved in documentation efforts.
Contact us to explore collaboration opportunities today.
Define_ClassyCat
“ClassyCat leverages LLMs to assign labels to a database of social media content based on user-defined taxonomies, all with minimal human supervision. The initial success of this tool illustrates how GenAI can simplify complex classification tasks, even for those who have limited technical expertise.”
— Ashkan Kazemi, “Leveraging generative AI for linguistically diverse classification”
Townsquare
Dec. 2-5
The Association for Women’s Rights in Development International Forum will be held in Bangkok and accessible online. Register today to attend the one-of-a-kind convening, which brings together feminist, women’s rights, gender justice, LBTQI+, and allied movements to connect, heal, and thrive.
Dec. 3-6
The Global Digital Health Forum will take place online and in Nairobi, Kenya. Register today to attend this global public health industry networking and relationship-building opportunity for technology vendors, donors, researchers, government representatives, and implementing organizations working in low- and middle-income countries.
Dec. 4
John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship applications are open for U.S. and international journalists to join a nine-month program at Stanford University. Fellows will receive coaching and customized workshops. International applications are due Dec. 14, and U.S. applicants can submit until Jan. 15.
What else we’re reading
“From July 2023 to October 2024, The Engine Room with support from the Open Society Foundation, investigated the current habits, needs and desires of social justice organizations based in the Majority World on mainstream and alternative social media platforms. (In this research popular alternatives mentioned include Mastodon, BlueSky and other social networks in the Fediverse.) The goal of this research was to better understand what it would take for a critical mass of users to move to alternative platforms.”
(Jeff Deutch, Denisse Albornoz, and Olivia Johnson; The Engine Room)
“The project investigates the types, channels, and emerging trends of gendered disinformation aimed at women candidates, activists, and voters. As part of the project, we developed Naka Bot, a chat bot that enables the public to report instances of potential gendered disinformation encountered online. Through this crowdsourced approach, we analysed 345 collected claims to identify patterns and assess the impact on women’s political engagement to determine what kinds of gendered disinformation exist in the online spaces and how it could impact women’s participation in the election process.”
(Africa Women Journalism Project)
“Anthropic has positioned itself as a more safety-conscious vendor than OpenAI. But the company’s terms of service allow its products to be used for tasks like ‘legally authorized foreign intelligence analysis,’ ‘identifying covert influence or sabotage campaigns,’ and ‘providing warning in advance of potential military activities.’”
(Kyle Wiggers, TechCrunch)
Did you miss an issue of the Checklist?
Read through the Checklist archive. We’ve explored a diverse range of subjects, including women’s and gender issues, crisis-response strategies, media literacy, elections, AI, and big data.
If there are updates you would like us to share from your country or region, please reach out to us at checklist@meedan.com.
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