Chirp Alert: a community approach to stop misinformation

Misinformation is a global challenge for our fast-paced society. With the upsurge in technology and social media use, there are growing channels for misinformation to spread. This results in uninformed decision making and amplifies existing societal insecurities. 

In Kenya, it can be clearly seen in how misinformation fuels political violence near election periods. While the widespread presence of trustworthy and verified information can stunt the spread of misinformation, these resources are often an unaffordable commodity for lower-resourced communities. As a result, misinformation impacts these communities disproportionately, while having no trustworthy infrastructure in place that is accessible to citizens. Misinformation exacerbates existing societal insecurities and leaves communities feeling anxious and unsure of how to go about their day-to-day life.

Kenya is an extremely collectivist society, so people want to help and look out for each other, but the pervasive nature of misinformation limits this. By amplifying existing collectivist attitudes in Kenya, we hope to empower citizens with trustworthy and relevant information that can be used to make informed decisions.

We are developing a community platform with students and community leaders and innovators in Kisumu, Kenya that will give users timely, hyperlocal, and accurate current events information happening around them. Users of this android/IOS app will be able to view and report verified event information, that is powered by the wisdom of the crowd. The purpose of Chirp Alert is to bring information back to citizens so that informed action and decision-making can proceed.

After countless conversations with Kenyans and community leaders, it became clear that Chirp Alert, and community crowdsourced platforms in general will amplify existing strong community attitudes towards service and advocacy. This is reflected in our solution as well! Within the messaging feature, users can easily join local community groups and become more sustainably involved in their community. This also will serve as a great help for community groups that struggle with outreach and recruiting diverse members.

As said before, every aspect of our solution seeks to foster and elevate the rich collectivist environment that already exists in Kenya. A video walkthrough of our app can be seen here.

Our solution serves residents of Kisumu, Kenya and has the potential to support citizens with access to a smartphone in collectivist cities across the globe. Chirp Alert will empower users with information so that they feel safer, can make economically viable decisions, and feel more connected to their community. 

The current systems in place to provide information to the public are not able to keep up with the exponential technological expansion in Subharahan Africa, and the resulting increase in misinformation. Entities like the government are facing internal issues like corruption, and therefore are not equipped to serve their constituents equitably. Lower resourced community members are frequently neglected and don’t feel as connected to their community.

Community is a central part of civic engagement, and it is at the heart of Chirp Alert. By giving users a direct way to contribute to community knowledge, residents have the agency to become more engaged in their communities. Our solution will empower citizens to make informed decisions that will result in safer, economically stable, and more connected communities.

Our team consists of two seniors at Penn State University who have been working on this for the past two years, a developer, and a network of students and community leaders in Kisumu. We are an interdisciplinary team that care about fostering more engaged communities, and see that as a solution to so many global issues, including misinformation. At Penn State, Sonika and Eric have been lucky enough to work with the Humanitarian Engineering and Social Entrepreneurship (HESE) program that is an incubator for social impact ventures that run out of Kisumu. Through this program and our initial field research trip last summer, we gained great connections and insights into the problem. We are currently planning to launch a beta version of Chirp Alert alongside our Kenyan partners so that we can start testing and refining our solution. This looks like co-creation of the UI/UX, as well as agreement on initial user base and key partners moving forward. The goal is to have Chirp Alert up and running, completely by our Kenyan partners as soon as possible. From the Penn State perspective, we are currently solidifying the founding team in Kisumu, Kenya and will continue to support the venture, but we recognize that in order for this to truly be a platform for Kenya, we need it to be run by those same community members.

Over the course of two years, our team has developed a UI?UX prototype of our app, as well as an in-depth business model that details all future relationships and functions of our venture. We have conducted hundreds of stakehodler conversations, and will complete two field research trips in Kisumu, where we will establish partnerships, additional team members, as well as expanding our potential user base. Our protoype is currently being developed, and we will have a functioning MVP within the next couple of months. We have a strong network of students and community innovators in Kenya that have worked with us and are helping us test our current prototype and will spread our user base once the app is fully developed and can launch in the Google Play store.

As an international team, this challenge was really appealing to us because we are interested in getting feedback and resources on how our team can take the next step in moving our venture forward. MIT Solve is a renowned global competition that would be an invaluable resource for us in this prototype stage! On of our biggest struggles is how to effectively work with our Kenyan team to make sure they are adequately supported so that they can eventually run the venture. Additionally, our team would really appreciate advice on how to mitigate potential negative impacts of our platform, such as potential increases in vigilantism or misrepresentation of a user report. 

In its current state, crowdsourcing is purely data focused. This utilitarian approach to crowdsourcing can aggregate trustworthy information, but when it fails to properly engage the community that the data is representing, it remains just as vulnerable to corruption as any other system currently in place. 

Crowdsourcing techniques lack direct connection and communication with the community. These solutions often pull information from users through a report feature or other simple interactions, but after the user has completed the interaction with little to no feedback, the quality of the crowdsourced data is often poor, and the user may feel dissatisfied with this transactional experience. Another limitation of the wisdom of the crowd approach is the reliance on the law of large numbers and trusting that the crowd in question will be responsible and truthful with their reports. This means that current crowdsourced networks are only effectively built for areas of the world with high population density. However, assuming that a high-density crowd will get it right can be a dangerous assumption when corruption and bribery are commonplace.

There is currently no platform available to Kenyans or focused on Kenyans that allows users to aggregate useful data, and also engage in a meaningful way with their community. If the system was radically redesigned with the community at the center instead of statistical insights, crowdsourcing in lower resourced communities can become a powerful tool to stop the spread of misinformation, as well as enhance community engagement levels.

By next year, we want to have a functioning app that has robust reporting capabilities so that users are able to stay and keep each other informed on current events happening in their area. To do this, we will have a developed prototype of our trustworthiness algorithm that will be able to process user reports effectively and accurately. In one year we will have strong partnerships with various community groups and will start implementing more community features. We will offer advertising for small businesses and vendors for free as we assess how valuable this service is for small businesses so we can continue to ideate on this in the future.

In five years, Chirp Alert will have grown more into the community and will hopefully be used as a tool for community outreach and recruitment for various grassroots organizations. Users of Chirp Alert can go onto the app to verify information, and can stop the spread of misinformation.

We will survey all users monthly to assess the extent of how using Chirp Alert has increased feelings of security and connectedness. We will also log street and small business sales to assess how much advertising on Chirp Alert has impacted business to ensure that this would be a worthy investment for people. Lastly, we will request community organizations to ask new members how they heard of them, and will keep track of the effect Chirp Alert has had on bringing in more members. We will also track number of active users, and their respective trustworthy scores.

If Kisumu residents trust Chirp Alert, then residents are able to make educated decisions while viewing trustworthy sources. Residents will have increased social satisfaction and high productivity while being able to dynamically respond to events. Then, residents of Kisumu experience increased feelings of community and feel empowered since their input has an impact, and they become surrounded by individuals who are catalysts in stopping the spread of misinformation.

As inputs for our impact is the desire to help one's community, funding, technical resources, and a community led founding team. Our team will then foster strong community relationships, develop and maintain the app and trustworthiness algorithm, and make sure users are using the platform responsibly. This will result in outputs of a credible algorithm that effectively validates user reports, increase in sales and visibility of local businesses and organizations, and a decrease in the spread of misinformation. 

To bring all of this together, Chirp Alert's mission is to provide users with a platform to receive trustworthy, timely, and hyperlocal information about public safety and entertainment events. ChirpAlert aims to empower users to explore their community, save money, and stay informed.  By doing so, we will help decrease crime rates, stimulate the economy, and create an increased sense of community.  

The core technology that powers our solution is multifaceted.  Our solution, Chirp Alert, is an Android and iOS app.  The nature of a crowdsourced platform is that in all likelihood the crowd does not have entirely pure intentions.  For us, this means that there are malicious actors that wish to spread misinformation or quell true information in order to further various political, business, or other interests.  In an ideal world, if everyone had good intentions, the wisdom of the crowd  could be trusted at its word and no safeguards would need to be in place.  In our non-ideal world, Chirp Alert uses a trustworthiness algorithm in order to stop malicious actors.  This algorithm takes into account a variety of factors including proximity, reputation, and experience in order to make an informed decision on the weight that a users opinion should have.  With Chirp Alert’s launch later this summer, we will begin to collect data from our users so that we can incorporate machine learning into our algorithm.  With something as niche as Chirp Alert, there are no existing data sets that could be used to train an effective model now, and we are extremely excited to launch so we can begin to see our algorithm evolve.

Our interdisciplinary team is made up of Penn State students, a developer, and community organizers and students in Kisumu, Kenya that all hold a shared vision of creating this platform to amplify all voices in their communities. As a result of current systemic issues, like corruption and socioeconomic inequities, groups of residents in Kisumu are not meaningfully included in civic discourse and decision making. We want to make sure that our solution is equitable by making sure underrepresented groups have an impact in their community by giving them a platform to share their experiences while also directly helping their community. To implement this, as part of our field research one of our goals was to talk to minoritized groups like women, disabled folks, and those living in rural areas to understand their unique perspectives and problems, and how Chirp Alert can be used to support them. In the creation of our founding team, we will also make sure that there will always be a diversity of opinions and identities present in all decision making. 

Chirp Alert is an Android and iOS application with a business model that is entirely embedded because our social impact and revenue are one in the same.  Chirp Alert will create revenue from our advertising model which is detailed in a later question.  Through this advertising model we are to give voices to small businesses that otherwise have no way to get their name out to the public.  As far as resources are concerned, we are able to run quite lean.  We only need a server and a few dedicated founders to make Chirp Alert run smoothly.  The founders include a developer and a team that has their ear to the ground with a strong understanding of the daily problems of Kenya, East Africa, or wherever Chirp Alert may be used. Our intervention is simply an augmentation to current communication channels by allowing for data aggregation and smart filtering.  Anyone with Chirp Alert will be able to benefit from the fruits of truthful information in an era where information moves so fast that it is almost impossible to catch misinformation at the source.  Our impact can be measured in a few ways.  The first is anecdotally with increased feelings of security in information.  The second is through money saved by users or money earned by customers that buy our advertising space.  The third is simply seeing that our users are not being exposed to false information at such a high rate and that their lives are easier because of it.  

Our plan to become financially sustainable stems from advertising revenue.  There are a few options that we would like to test on our app once we grow to an appropriate size.  The first is typical display advertising that large businesses often like to get involved with.  The second is search optimization within our search feature on the app.  This could mean that local businesses can appear higher up in our search results in order to get their name out there.  We understand that small businesses will love this opportunity.  Third is map recognition.  This would be implemented after Chirp Alert reaches a certain threshold of daily users.  This would mean that the map feature on the app would no longer should labeled businesses like Google Maps or similar software.  Instead, businesses would be able to pay in order to appear on our map so that whenever a user is scanning their surroundings looking for reports, they would be able to see the business on the map.  

This is a bit of a tough question for Chirp Alert to answer right now.  The team is largely made up of students from Penn State University who work on the venture taking no salary.  The only expenses we have incurred include our website, server, and planned development this summer.  We have been fortunate enough to win equity-free funding in four pitch competitions thus far.  In total, we have raised $4,500.  Roughly half of this money has been used to develop Chirp Alert in order to make it available in app stores by the end of July.  Our server usage is free of charge for the forseeable future.  Our only recurring expense right now is $12 per year for our domain.  All that being said, we understand that costs will increase when Chirp Alert is able to launch and gain users.  In order to gauge interest in the advertising methods mentioned above, our team was able to travel to Kenya last summer and complete research with small businesses in Kenya.  98% of the small businesses that we talked to were highly interested in this opportunity.  Anecdotally, many asked if they could begin advertising right away because they were so excited.  This excitement can be attributed to the fact that there are very few advertising methods in sub-Saharan Africa with such a low barrier to entry that anyone can do it.  Overall, because of our low cost structure and high demand for advertising, we believe financial sustainability will be feasible quite early on.