Building Resilience Through Transparency
If we know what good journalism looks like, we can build resilience against all kinds of misinformation, manipulation, extremism, and polarization. But more importantly, we can read what we want, when we want, with critical balance.
Augmented Media Literacy® is a company and technology that has a twofold purpose. We help consumers of news to trust what they are reading by helping them understand if the content was produced using good journalism practices. Equally, we help the most trustworthy news providers display and turn that trustworthiness into the credit, visibility, and economic benefit they deserve from their readers and the public.
“We aim to provide a level of media literacy to any news reader that could only be achieved after reading thousands of articles.”
Using Machine Learning, we transparently reveal objective points about the use of good journalism practices.
How We Got Here
Our initiative was born out of Finland, a country consistently ranked as having the world’s most trusted media. The country is fortunate enough to have a high level of societal media literacy where most of the population can discern the difference between fact-based news reporting vs. tabloids. The through out the project, started in 2018, aim has been to find a way for a global audience to have the same high confidence in media that is enjoyed by Finns.
Augmented Media Literacy started as a pioneering project led by an international team of Finnish and US-based innovators, designed to empower individuals worldwide with the tools to navigate the complex and often misleading landscape of online news.
Starting with the use of early machine learning, research, and through many iterations, this project came to the conclusion that a Chrome extension that reveals information directly on the page you are reading would best help people read news articles providing enhanced media literacy skills.
Where We Are Headed
As the inventors of Augmented Media Literacy, we believe that it can revolutionize how people consume and interpret news by providing users with a growing list of tools to critically evaluate information sources, identify biases, and engage in thoughtful discussions.
Our goal is to provide the critical transparency no matter where a person leans from their personal bias and experience, in order to help people easily see misinformation and media manipulation with their own eyes and make their own best decisions with or without the use of our tools. We are working to be the launchpad that will promote wider media transparency for anyone willing to challenge their bias and who wants to read news with an enhanced ability to see through the ever more complex world of news reporting.
Working Principles
- We want people to have the ability to easily know the difference between news and entertainment.
- This project champions impartiality and editorial independence by cultivating a discerning public rather than dictating what to believe.
- We will choose metrics that are based on real data, reveal them to the user and allow users to compare with others and form their own conclusions.
- This approach aims to bridge divides and restore trust in the integrity of news within the complex digital environment.
Leadership
Stephen Lee
Co-Founder & CEO
Steve is an MBA and machine design engineer with over 35 years of experience in business development, media relations, journalism, marketing communications, and software development management. He has worked with companies ranging from General Motors and Bosch, to various Finnish startups during his 25 years in Finland.
Austin Christensen
Co-Founder & CTO
Austin brings extensive architectural expertise from his distinguished tenure at Dolby, CGI, and Realeyes. As Chief Architect, he specializes in designing robust cloud infrastructures and complex software solutions. His deep technical background ensures that the platform is built on a secure, scalable foundation capable of handling global news analysis in real-time.