An International Center For Journalists (ICFJ) Fellow, Hannah Ajakaiye has emphasised the need for fact-checking organisations to continue to collaborate in disseminating information that would reach more people, especially people with disabilities (PWDs)
She gave the charge in an address at the virtual session held to relaunch News Verifier Africa’s website on Friday, August 25th.
Ajakaiye who is the Founder of FactsMatterNg said it is not sufficient to fact-check information, but there is still the need to collaborate to increase the reach.
“Before now, we have had fact-checking organisations coming up with incredible works and spending a lot of time on research, but most times, the fact-checks don’t reach a lot of people and that is a disadvantage considering the time, effort and research put together.”
While acknowledging that it might be hard work to reach more people, she stressed the importance of media organizations collaborating with influencers and other media partners to combat misinformation in the digital space.
Ajakaiye explained that FactsMatterNg has been able to reach more people through collaboration.
“We collaborate with influencers and fact-checking organisations. What we do is look for how to compliment the organisations’ efforts by offering something that could help their work reach more people since it doesn’t make sense to replicate or duplicate their efforts.”
“Influencing Marketing is one of the reach we can use to widen our audience when it comes to promoting fact-checks,” she stated.
She also urged the organisations to address specific communities when trying to ensure that fact-checks reach a larger audience base.
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