Grants:Project/Rapid/Dennis6492/WikiRadio/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2018-19 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:Project/Rapid/Dennis6492/WikiRadio.
You may still comment on this report on its discussion page, or visit the discussion page to read the discussion about this report.
You are welcome to Email rapidgrants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Goals

Did you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went?

The results were mixed since only six episodes of the first season could be recorded, this was mainly due to the December holidays of Humano Derecho radio station, which forced us to readjust the episodes schedule, and also the blocking of Wikipedia in the country, which meant focusing our efforts on this situation and neglecting part of the radio space, although we were able to make an episode trying to explain the causes of the blocking of Wikipedia.

In general and despite the hurdles, we are satisfied with the recorded material and the reception we've had with the episodes that have been broadcast, the experience was novel as it was far from any initiative that we had to pull off in the past, which lent itself to experimentation with a platform such as the radio. We intend to finish the first season with six additional episodes and consider the future podcast format.

Broadcasted episodes:

Episode 1: Fake news: During this first episode we talked about the incidence of "Fake News" in today's society and had as a special guest, Carlos Delgado Flores, who is a journalist and academic researcher, with an important career in the area of the knowledge society.

Episode 2: Access to information: During this episode, we talked about access to public information and Wikipedia. As a special guest, we had Mildred Rojas of the organization Transparencia Venezuela.

Episode 3: Wikimedia Venezuela: During this episode, we talked about the beginnings of the Wikimedia civil association in Venezuela and the activities we want to develop, we also commented on the wiki community beyond our borders.

Episode 4: Gender gap: During this episode, we talked about the gender gap in Wikipedia and in today's society, our special guest for this episode was Yenni Peña, founder of EmpoderaRSE.

Episode 5: WikiDDHH: During this episode, we talked about the importance of curating information about the violation of human rights in the country and in the region. We were accompanied by Luisina Ferrante from Wikimedia Argentina, to talk about the #WikiDDHH project.

Special Episode: Blocking of Wikipedia: During this episode, we talked about the blocking and censorship suffered by Wikipedia at the hands of Conatel in mid-January 2019, and the repercussions of censoring the most important source of open knowledge online.

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets.

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
Absence of information broadcasting platforms about Wikimedia projects in the country.	Completed	In the episodes broadcasted, the importance of the edition in Wikipedia was constantly approached, this was something new and leaving aside some minor mentions of the press, had not been carried out so extensively in the country.
Gap between readers and contributors, the few bold that step forward to edit	Completed	Especially in the episodes on the gender gap and access to information, information was provided to reduce this important content gap in Wikipedia, emphasizing the importance of moving from reading to editing. And how this situation (lack of editors) profoundly affects the quality of information that exists in Wikipedia.
Myths around the encyclopedia	Completed	The episodes broadcasted contemplated the need to understand the policies and conventions agreed upon by the community in such a way that they can have an impact on identifying fake news, neutral point of views dealing with human rights issues and allowing the use of reliable sources that guarantee access to information.
Low participation levels of the community of registered users.	Completed	There was an open space provided to comment on the voluntary work in Venezuela, carried out through edit-a-thons of workshops on different subjects, which objectives are precise to address the low presence of editors in the community.
Low levels of new female users in Wikimedia projects.	Completed	The interview of Yenni Peña during our program on the gender gap, was fundamental to understanding the existing reality in the country with respect to the inclusion of women in the digital environment and in Wikipedia in particular.

Learning

Projects do not always go according to plan. Sharing what you learned can help you and others plan similar projects in the future. Help the movement learn from your experience by answering the following questions:

What worked well?
What did not work so well?
What would you do differently next time?

The episodes were broadcasted through the platform of Humano Derecho radio estación, this experience helped us to know how a radio station works and adjusted us to its transmission schedules and policies for the use of the space, all very instructive for us. Soon after, the episodes were published through our social networks with a link to SoundCloud, it was helpful to have this type of material published on our networks to connect with our niche, which represented an additional interest to our audiences through the hashtag #SuenaWiki

The recording style was adapted to our diffusion needs, the most complicated part was to adjust our schedules to those of the guests of the program, to continue with the programs we might migrate to a podcast format, which means a little more flexibility with the scripts, the themes to develop and the guests. We could not video record the episodes and distribute them on YouTube, this was because the camera of Human Right radio station was broken and we do not have a camera of our own. We are looking, from the donation of a partner, a video camera to record our future programs, and be able to take advantage of YouTube as well.

The tandem of two presenters served as an effective formula to explain how Wikipedia works and the movement behind it through the eyes of an expert presenter (User:Oscar_.) and a novel one (User:Marinati55).

The alliance with Redes Ayuda helped us to have exposure beyond our niche to people and organizations that work in defense of human rights and other social groups in the city of Caracas, although concrete partnerships with these groups could not be established.

Using copyrighted music limited when uploading the episodes to Wikimedia Commons, for future episodes try to incorporate only music free of copyright.

Finances

Grant funds spent

Please describe how much grant money you spent for approved expenses, and tell us what you spent it on.

USD $200 (Community Outreach–details)
USD $300 (Producer of the program–details)
USD $200 (Promotional material–details)
USD $108 (Production expenses–details)

Receipts in Google Drive.

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds?

Remaining funds have been used or will be used for other approved mission-aligned activities. This use has been requested in writing and approved by WMF.

We have a remaining amount of USD $142. We are planning to finish the first season of the program with six more episodes, which are scheduled to be recorded in April and May, and use these remaining funds to cover production expenses.

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?

List of episodes of SuenaWiki in SoundCloud