After the 2024 Investigative Journalism Fellowship was announced in early June, Meedan’s partners received many inspiring applications from midcareer journalists throughout the program’s global focus areas.
The topics proposed in these submissions explore a range of concerns — from economic stability to public priorities — reflecting the unique needs of the different communities our partners serve across their respective regions, all of which are prerequisite subjects for ensuring the public can be informed and engaged during and beyond elections. Now, we’re excited to share with you several of the opportunities that selected fellows in the program will pursue over the coming months.
Globe-spanning reach, local grounding
Fellows participating in the program will report on a variety of issues to ensure their communities are well informed during exceptional circumstances, political contests, and other moments that demand sustained civic engagement.
Iraq: Diverse communities with wide-ranging needs, on- and offline
The Network of Iraqi Reporters for Investigative Journalism (NIRIJ) has selected nearly a dozen fellows to participate in the program. Participants hail from a wide range of areas, including Al-Muthana, Baghdad, and the Kurdistan region.
NIRIJ fellows will explore topics such as environmental degradation and disease, child labor, religious persecution, consumer protection, drug use, and technology-facilitated, gender-based violence.
Brazil: Extensive explorations of political violence and hyperlocal needs
In Brazil, Agência Pública selected two fellows who submitted ideas for indispensable projects. One journalist has proposed to examine political violence in the state of Rio de Janeiro, where militias and drug groups fight over territory. Another fellow will explore the links between political violence, land access, and the needs of quilombola communities — descendants of ancestors who had escaped enslavement — amid the run-up to the country’s 2024 municipal elections.
South Asia: Relevant topics for Indian voters
Meedan’s data journalism partner in South Asia has selected several fellows from varied regions of India, including New Delhi and the states of Maharashtra, Haryana, and Jharkhand. At present, fellows expect to investigate the concerns of specific local voting demographics, including young people focused on employment, women wanting to learn about overall health care access — with a particular emphasis on maternal health — rural voters concerned about agricultural practices and diminishing yields, and residents of Maharashtra who would like to explore regional programs for clean drinking water.
More to come for the 2024 Investigative Journalism Fellowship
Fellows will soon begin to conduct their work on these timely journalistic projects, and Meedan will continue to bolster reporters’ efforts with programmatic support, networking opportunities, and more. At present, our partners in Lebanon at The Public Source are still reviewing applications for their editorial opening.
As the fellowship progresses, we look forward to learning more from these reporters — and our partners — about what they’re uncovering in their tenacious efforts to assist with civic engagement at the ground level.
Stay tuned to the Checklist newsletter for the latest updates on Meedan’s efforts throughout the globe.
Footnotes
- Online conversations are heavily influenced by news coverage, like the 2022 Supreme Court decision on abortion. The relationship is less clear between big breaking news and specific increases in online misinformation.
- The tweets analyzed were a random sample qualitatively coded as “misinformation” or “not misinformation” by two qualitative coders trained in public health and internet studies.
- This method used Twitter’s historical search API
- The peak was a significant outlier compared to days before it using Grubbs' test for outliers for Chemical Abortion (p<0.2 for the decision; p<0.003 for the leak) and Herbal Abortion (p<0.001 for the decision and leak).
- All our searches were case insensitive and could match substrings; so, “revers” matches “reverse”, “reversal”, etc.
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