Key Sections 

Introduction

It is a part of a pioneering initiative aimed at revolutionizing media representation for women, youth, and marginalized groups through Artificial Intelligence means.

This transformative AI Tool, completed in just six months, marks the beginning of a promising five-year collaboration that promises to change the media landscape in profound ways.

The scale of what we’ve accomplished is not just in the tool itself but in how we built it—by empowering the local community with AI and machine learning skills. This approach doesn’t just solve an issue; it builds the local capacity to keep addressing these challenges moving forward.

Find out how we did it!

What makes our project stand out?

In just half a year, we’ve set a new benchmark for how technology can facilitate societal change, using cutting-edge AI techniques such as natural language processing to analyze and rate media content for its diversity and reliability.

Stay tuned as we continue this exciting journey, pushing the boundaries of AI and community empowerment to foster a more inclusive media environment. Join us in following this impactful story, and discover how technology and collaboration can create a brighter, more inclusive future.

The Partnership

About The Asia Foundation

The Asia Foundation is a nonprofit international development organization committed to improving lives across a dynamic and developing Asia. Informed by six decades of experience and deep local expertise, our work across the region addresses five overarching goals—strengthen governance, empower women, expand economic opportunity, increase environmental resilience, and promote international cooperation.

About Omdena

We are a platform helping mission-driven organizations and startups build impactful AI solutions through global collaboration and empowering AI Engineers from all over the world to become changemakers. To date, over 20,000+ AI Engineers from 120+ countries have been part of Omdena, building impact-driven solutions for 250+ organizations. Omdena also has local chapters in 195+ locations across 80+ countries.

The Problem

Why Is This Representation in the Media Important?

Media shapes perceptions and narratives in society, and ensuring diverse and inclusive representation is crucial for a fair portrayal of all community members. Through this project, we’ve introduced a Comprehensive Media Analysis Tool, specifically designed to identify and improve how these groups are represented in media across two major provinces in Nepal.

Global Challenge of Biased Media Representation

Across the globe, the representation of women, youth, and marginalized groups in the media is often fraught with biases. These groups are frequently portrayed negatively or ignored altogether, leading to societal misunderstandings and perpetuating inequality. Everyone deserves to have their story told accurately, contributing to a more comprehensive understanding and respect among all people.

Why is it a Problem in Nepal?

In Nepal, the issue of biased media representation is particularly acute due to the country’s diverse cultural and linguistic landscape. This diversity adds layers of complexity to how stories are told and understood. Marginalized communities often find their narratives overshadowed or misrepresented, contributing to their ongoing exclusion from mainstream society. The rapid proliferation of media platforms, including social media, radio, and newspapers, complicates the ability to monitor and rectify these biases effectively.

The Urgent Need for Advanced Monitoring Tools

The sheer volume of content and the speed at which it is disseminated make manual analysis impractical, necessitating advanced technological solutions to comprehensively analyze and address these disparities. Additionally, there is a significant gap in the tools available for analyzing media content that can scrape and interpret data from various sources accurately. Without the appropriate tools, media professionals are ill-equipped to identify the extent of bias, let alone address it, resulting in the perpetuation of stereotypes and a lack of diversity in media representation.

The Goal

The Background

Outdated Tools and the Impact on Media Professionals

The current media monitoring tools in Nepal are outdated and incapable of effectively processing the vast amount of data generated daily across various media platforms. This technical deficiency prevents media professionals from addressing biases in their content accurately.

Partnership with The Asia Foundation

Our partnership with The Asia Foundation in Nepal aims to tackle these challenges by leveraging advanced technologies such as AI and natural language processing. These technologies are crucial for developing systems capable of detecting and correcting biases in media representation, which can transform media practices not only in Nepal but globally.

Vision for a More Inclusive Media Landscape

By making media more inclusive in Nepal, we’re taking essential steps toward fostering a more informed, empathetic, and united global community. This initiative not only aims to empower local media professionals with the tools to create more accurate and equitable media narratives but also sets a precedent for similar transformations in media practices worldwide.

Our Approach

Grassroot AI

Central to the concept of Grassroots AI is the focus on the human element in AI development, ensuring that solutions are technologically advanced, and culturally and contextually appropriate for the communities they are designed to serve. This approach involves community members in the development process, leading to AI solutions that are finely tuned to the specific needs and nuances of the local context. This inclusion fosters a sense of ownership and acceptance within the community, which is crucial for sustainable and impactful technology implementations.

In This Project:

We created a Comprehensive Media Analysis Tool to Improve Media Representation of Women, Youth, and Marginalized Groups

Step 1. 

Engaging the Community of Nepal to enable upskilling in the region and empower people through AI through Omdena Academy

In this initial phase, we introduced the community of beginners  to theoretical introduction into the AI techniques that needed to be used to produce the final solution Natural Language Processing and Web Scraping, with a special focus on how these technologies can be used to analyze and understand media representation. Specifically, community members learned to extract large volumes of data from digital media sources, enabling the examination of how different issues and groups are portrayed in the Nepali media landscape.

Step 2:

Gaining real-life experience through open-source Projects in Omdena Local Chapters

With the theoretical foundation in place, the opening of local chapters allowed the newly trained members to apply their skills in real-world contexts. They undertook projects such as Web Scraping to gather media data and used Natural Language Processing tools to analyze content. This not only provided hands-on experience but also started generating insights into the biases and trends in media representation within Nepal.

You can hear first hand about this experience from one of our project managers here.

Step 3: 

AI Innovation Challenge

During the AI Innovation Challenge, the focus shifted to deeper data analysis and model building. The team used the collected media data to build AI models that could more accurately identify and categorize media bias and representation trends. This step was crucial for developing a more nuanced understanding of media dynamics in Nepal, leveraging AI to pinpoint patterns that human analysts might overlook.

Step 4: 

Top Talent Project

In the final phase, our top developers used the insights and models developed earlier to create a sophisticated, comprehensive analysis tool. This product was designed to continuously monitor and analyze media representation, providing ongoing insights into how different social issues and groups are portrayed. This tool aims to offer stakeholders, like journalists and policymakers, valuable data to foster more balanced and fair media coverage in Nepal.

Each step of the project not only advanced the technical skills of the community members but also directly contributed to a deeper understanding of media representation in Nepal, showcasing Omdena’s unique ability to merge community empowerment with targeted, impactful technological solutions.

The Outcome 

This solution has transformed the landscape of media analysis, offering a seamless and impactful user experience that sets new benchmarks in data handling and processing. At the core of our system is a sophisticated yet user-friendly platform that ensures all operations, from data collection to analysis, are efficient and effective.

Key Features That Make a Difference

Spreading the impact even further:

Our solution was a key highlight at the AI Conference on March 3, 2024, in Nepal, a major event orchestrated by prominent organizations including the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, The Asia Foundation, the Robotics Association of Nepal, UKAid, the Nepal Academy of Science and Technology, and AECON. 

Additionally, our team is actively collaborating with the Government of Nepal to craft a forward-thinking AI Policy, reinforcing our dedication to boosting AI literacy and infrastructure across the nation.

Other Applications of such Technology

Applied Methodology 1:

AI Powered Bias Detection

Can also be utilized in:

Applied Methodology 2:

A Comprehensive AI-Powered Approach to Diversity and Trends Monitoring

Can also be utilized in:

Time Frame

The whole project took just 6 months, knowing we needed to:

1. Gather participants in a new location, organize and conduct courses also locally. 
2. Build Local Chapters, and conduct Open Source Projects that involve among others gathering and preparing the data with our new AI adepts.
3. Conduct testing different approaches for technical solutions and parameters. 
4. Build a functional product Dashboard.
   

Further Possibilities

To summarize this initiative we wanted to draw the vision on potential steps that could be taken to further expand the impact and capabilities of an AI-driven media analysis tool:

1. Expanding Geographically: Collaborating with international NGOs, governments, and media organizations to adapt and deploy the tool across different countries, tailoring it to accommodate local languages and media landscapes.
2. Customizing for Specific Sectors: Adapting the tool for critical sectors such as healthcare, education, or politics to analyze media representations and biases, aiding organizations in these fields to refine public perception and improve policymaking through data-driven insights.
3. Integrating with Educational Programs: Partnering with universities and educational institutions to incorporate the tool into journalism and media studies curriculums, equipping future professionals with the skills to identify and address media bias.
4. Developing a Public Access Interface: Creating a public-facing version of the tool that allows journalists, researchers, and the general public to conduct their own analyses, promoting greater transparency and awareness.

Want to work with us too?

Let’s see if we are a good fit