Google News Initiative began a half year-long campaign in 2021 to raise awareness and build up basic fact-checking knowledge for university students across Asia.
The campaign kicked off in April coinciding with the annual International Fact-Checking Day, and ended at the APAC Trusted Media Summit (Sept 29-30, 2021). Spanning six months and split across four phases, this campaign is conducted in seven languages, namely; English, Bahasa Indonesia, Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, Korean and Thai.
Our live-action fact-check battle saw 268 teams from 13 countries across APAC duking it out in a knock-out round with 16 teams proceeding to the finals. This inaugural campaign saw team "ieak" from Japan crowned as champions, while fellow Japanese team "Salty Magic" (Ritsumeikan University) and Korean team "팩트 한접시" (Kookmin University) took runner-up spots.
ieak members; Koya Shintaku, Masataka Kondo and Rion Ikramov, are third-year law students from Sophia University in Tokyo.
Many thanks to our partners across APAC for making this event an educational and impactful learning experience for students in the region. A big shoutout goes to DataLEADS, Aliansi Jurnalis Independen, Taiwan Factcheck Center, AAJA-Asia, DataN, MCOT Sure and Share Center, FactCheck Initiative Japan, SNU FactCheck Center.
We look forward to launch a second verification campaign for students in 2022! Stay tuned to our website to find out when the campaign goes live.
