Dniester TruthBridge Hackathon: three winning teams to benefit from support worth 5,500 dollars each

Chisinau, 29 January /MOLDPRES/ - Three out of 11 teams participating in the Nistru TruthBridge (Dniester TruthBridge) hackathon will benefit from support worth 5,500 dollars each and from mentorship for the development of the prototypes suggested. The winning teams developed and submitted the concepts of three projects with digital solutions of preventing and combating the misinformation and the discourses instigating to hatred, as well as the promotion of the verified and reliable content in the online environment.     

During two days, 26-27 January, over 50 people from both banks of Dniester – specialists in IT, journalism, communication, business, banking sector and marketing – worked to identify the digital instruments, which allow identifying and counteracting the misinformation in real time, before it spreads too much. The participants were guided by mentors from Moldova, Romania and Georgia and tested different digital prototypes and concepts, in order to cope with the misinformation, as well as to monitor and verify the information on social networks. Also, they learned to present the concepts as attractively as possible and to persuade the public of their usefulness and benefit.    

„I want to congratulate the participants for ingenuity and new ideas, stressing the role of the United Nations Peacebuilding Fund in the development of digital solutions for approaching the misinformation and the discourse of hatred, which lead to the fragility of the social cohesion. Thank you for participation and for the fact that you have worked with so much persistence on your prototypes. We are impressed of what you have managed to do in such a short period of time and we are proud of these results,!’’ Resident Representative of the United Nations Daniela Gasparikova said.        

Those three winning teams are:

Providence Lab: an extension due to analyze and detect the true stories from fake ones;

DDK: an instrument of monitoring the information from official sources on a single platform, without a separate search on each governmental website;  

Get Innovation: an instrument which will allow the Internet users to assess the content of a story according to the narrative conveyed, validating or invalidating the information.  

All the three concepts of projects will use instruments and algorithms of analysis, in order to evaluate the content of the information, by identifying eventual misinformation. In the next three months, the teams will benefit from information support and guidance.    

The hackathon was organized by Transparency International-Moldova, with the support of the project, Building of sustainable and inclusive peace, consolidation of social trust and cohesion in Moldova. It is financed by the UN Peacebuilding Fund and implemented by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights – OHCHR, UNDP and UN Women.