Community Outline
The way we work, July 2018.
CredCo provides a research community in which participants advance hypotheses around credible information by supporting interdisciplinary research studies that validate indicators through testing.
Research activities will coalesce under a Research Community structure in Phase Two. Key characteristics of this period are: dynamic, developing, continued experimentation.
In order to advance the Coalition’s outcomes and goals, the research community will foster three types of engagement, at three different levels, described below:
Coming up with the questions that we want to answer, and feeding back into the process.
Fostering productive discussion and exploration around the assessment of credibility is the heart of the Research Community, and Community Groups serve as the heart of its participatory structure. A Community Group fosters discussions among community members in ways that grapple around the central question of the Credibility Coalition.
Advancing discovery and insight into credibility through advisory and material support for testing.
Microgrants and partnered grant proposals are the engine that drive the coalition forward, by transforming exploratory questions into more concrete insight through studies that validate of the CredCo schema. These studies are the practical application of research questions set by the Community Group(s), and they are provided practical support through the microgrant application process.
While the Community Group structure supports open exploration and questioning, it is through the microgranting or partnered grant submission process that research studies can formally affiliate themselves with CredCo.
Providing guidance on questions of research practice and the overall goals of the Coalition in sync with the larger problem and related fields.
In order to make sure that the Research Community stays relevant and responsive, a group of Advisors will review the activities of the Research Community broadly and provide overall direction. Discussions and advice provided via these Advisors will guide the Meedan/Hacks-Hackers leadership of the Coalition.
Items for discussion may include:
- Which open data licenses to use, especially if there is a goal to make some of it monetizable to feed into the sustainability of CredCo.
- Data ethics guidelines and researcher support. Operating in misinformation environments may be stressful for research projects, especially given certain subject matters. We may want to provide some connection to existing resources on this.
- Community culture
- Funding Avenues and Partnerships Communications and procedures for these advisors are still TBD. The Coalition leadership would be responsible for updating Advisors on a regular [monthly] basis about Coalition progress. New ideas, concerns, and issues related to the Research Community can be communicated to any these Advisors, who can take it up in further discussions.
