Meedan is building something new. Here’s your first look.
We’re working on an innovative tool that will use AI to help scale community knowledge.
Hey Checklisters,
We have big news to share about where Meedan is headed next.
If you’re running late, here’s your TL;DR Checklist:
✅ Generative AI is changing the information landscape in fundamental ways.
✅ We’re building a tool to help media and civil society groups use AI to connect with communities.
✅ We’ll pilot our tool in the U.S. with support from Press Forward, and a global release will follow.
Top Comment
With the rise of profit-driven, commercial generative AI models, people are being steered toward highly centralized and homogenized bases of information that often lack local knowledge and misrepresent facts. As an organization dedicated to equitable information access, how do we respond to this sea change? We’re charting a different path — one that will allow our partners to harness the benefits of this new technology while staying true to their values and missions.
Scaling access to trustworthy information
At Meedan, we want to serve the public interest by making knowledge more accessible, localized, relevant, and verifiable. As generative AI begins to reshape the ways people seek and receive information, we know that our approach has to take on new dimensions.
That’s why we’re building a new AI-powered tool that will assist newsrooms and civil society organizations as they index and organize deep contextual information — drawing from their own reporting and research, public records, and vetted community knowledge sources.
This fall, we will begin piloting an early version of the tool with select newsroom partners, an approach that will allow us to further refine the scope of the project and ready our tool for broader deployment.
Deepening newsrooms’ relationships with readers
We’re proud to share that we were recently awarded a grant from Press Forward, a U.S.-based national initiative to reimagine local news. The grant will enable us to pilot our work with Epicenter NYC and Deep South Today, a nonprofit network of local newsrooms that includes Mississippi Today and New Orleans-based Verite News.
The end goal is to build newsroom-operated chatbots that will deliver succinct answers to readers’ questions, solicit their tips and ideas, and offer them pathways to reading full-length articles. While funding has enabled us to begin this work in the U.S., we will initiate pilot projects with partners in the Larger World by the fourth quarter of 2025. Keep reading the Checklist for more updates on this exciting new endeavor.
Contact us to explore collaboration opportunities.
Townsquare
Aug. 1
A virtual media workshop will be hosted by Earth Journalism Network on Aug. 26-27 and Sept. 2-3. Business and finance journalists in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, and Thailand are invited to strengthen their climate-focused reporting on environmental accountability and related topics. Applications are due Aug. 1.
Aug. 8
Tactical Tech’s “To AI or Not To AI” event will feature workshops and hands-on collaborative sessions from Nov. 12-14 in Berlin. Accepted participants will critically engage with AI-powered tools and tactics. Apply by Aug. 8 to take advantage of the early bird rate.
Aug. 26-27
The 2025 Digital Rights in the Asia-Pacific (DRAPAC25) Assembly will take place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, bringing together diverse stakeholders to combat rising digital authoritarianism in the region by collaboratively shaping rights-based digital governance, bolstering the resilience of at-risk human rights defenders, and pioneering innovative strategies through cross-sector alliances. The assembly takes place Aug. 26-27.
What we’re reading
“Myanmar is facing a layered emergency: one of natural disaster, political violence, and systemic digital repression. The lines between these crises are blurring. Internet blackouts are not isolated incidents; they are long-term policies of silence. Surveillance infrastructure is not theoretical; it is being implemented on the ground. Propaganda is not incidental; it is part of a strategy to dominate the information space.”
(Wai Phyo Myint and Faiz Naeem, Tech Policy Press)
“In addition to the offline attacks on protesters, authorities shut down access to essential digital communication platforms and media websites, curtailing the free flow of information. Data captured by the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) platform showed WhatsApp, Facebook, Signal, and Telegram were blocked on at least three mobile networks beginning on June 26 when protests erupted. At the time of drafting this statement, people in Togo are still unable to access these platforms without Virtual Private Networks (VPNs).”
(Access Now and #KeepItOn)
“By comparing these four case studies, we can identify some of the overall content moderation challenges that face languages in the Global South. Additionally, this comparison can help us identify the particular challenges inherent in moderating diverse linguistic and cultural contexts, enhancing our understanding of what could possibly be ‘effective’ content moderation for these regions and beyond.”
(Mona Elswah, Aliya Bhatia, and Dhanaraj Thakur, Center for Democracy and Technology)
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