Africa Check is a non-profit organization set up in 2012 to promote accuracy in public debate and the media in Africa. The goal of Africa Check’s work is to raise the quality of information available to society across the continent. Since 2012 we have fact-checked more than 1600 claims on topics from crime and race in South Africa to population numbers in Nigeria and fake health cures in countries around Africa.
Based in the Journalism Department of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, Africa Check seeks to appoint a Health Fellow (Full-time)
Africa Check is offering a year-long fellowship, in partnership with Facebook, to deepen our health misinformation work. Over the past several months, our team has increasingly focused on debunking Covid-19 misinformation, and we want to expand our capacity to combat health misinformation and surface more reliable information to people.
Key responsibilities include:
- Researching and producing fact-check reports on key health claims circulating in public debate in South Africa and southern Africa
- Researching and producing health-related factsheets and guides to increase the public’s access to accurate and reliable information
- Acting as a spokesperson for Africa Check, including speaking at events, conferences and in the media on our health misinformation efforts
- Supporting our efforts to build impactful partnerships with reliable health experts and health bodies.
- Monitoring both social and mainstream media and other relevant channels for health claims of concern.
- Working with our impact team to identify trends in health misinformation across the continent, and effectively communicate those insights to help us and others in the fact-checking and media community continuously learn and improve our approach to Health fact-checking
- Finding and implementing innovative ways to better coordinate our health misinformation efforts across our four countries of operation
- Assisting in training workshops and other events for media, civil society organizations, the general public and policymakers
- The fellow will have access to training modules from third-party experts as well as from the team at CrowdTangle, Facebook’s social analytics tool
ELIGIBILITY
- A bachelor’s degree
- Five years’ experience in fact-related fields such as media, research and academia
- Specialist subject knowledge in health
- Well-honed nonsense detector
- Passion for news, and in particular health news
- Ability to act impartially
- Attention to detail
- Ability to explain complex issues in simple language
- Strong numeracy, analytical and research skills
- Resilient self-starter who takes ownership of projects while working collaboratively in a team environment
- Fluency in an African language/French (advantageous)
- Experience in working across diverse geographies and cultures (advantageous)
DEADLINE: August 31, 2020.
To apply and for more information visit here
