As a media startup in the past few months, we have had several moments to celebrate. Internet cost was lowered, bloggers and journalists were released,and newspapers are mushrooming once again since 2005 election.
Despite all these excitements we are facing with new challenges that are enormous and could have severe impact on ordinary civilians. This time the media landscape is a threat to readers than journalists and bloggers. This is mainly due to fake news, misinformation and digital illiteracy.
People were attacked because of irresponsible social media behavior, students were traumatized because of fake news, prominent figures were abused because of misinformation. As a result, we are compelled to revise our media strategy and add up a solution to our existing platform. This will not be our first product but in the coming three months we will be enrolling a total of three products that are aimed at curbing these challenges. For today we announce the launch of Ask Addis Insight
Product Name- Ask Addis Insight
Problem– Most of the time people have difficulties in finding a credible platform where they can get information, assist or update online. As a result, they tend to be influenced by social media updates that add more confusion to their question. Google is also not a solution as we don’t have enough content that addresses our question. Digital illiteracy is also one factor where people struggle to search and access information. We believe irrespective of the degree of network people have on social media they should have one platform where they go to seek information.
Solution– AskAddis Insight will be our first beta community driven product. It is aimed at facilitating Q&A to address critical questions and information through user’sinteraction.
The idea is simple anyone will ask questions on any topic they are interested preferably on Ethiopia related topics and anyone will register and provide their answers. Questions and Answers will be voted by users also derogatory and hateful response will result in user account termination. The platform encourages information
How to use the platform-Users can read questions and answers without creating an account but in order to submit a question or answer, users need to register. Users will be voted by other users based on their engagement which builds up scores and boost users profile for their contribution.
Finally, we encourage all our followers to help us in building a community devoted to informing instead of misinforming.
