/Fact-Checker

Primary LanguageJavaScript

Fact-Checker

This repo is to hold the task of ShellHacks Hackathon. We have made this project under the sponsor challenge by MITRE. A app based on mis/disinformaton.

The Problem Statement by MITRE

Pick a Problem: Health Access and Delivery, National Security or Mis/Dis Information by MITRE Description: Hack on any topic you’re passionate about related to the following subject areas (health care access, national security, or online mis/disinformation)-- note: this hack can be anything from building an app to developing a website, or another programmable entity.

The Project Idea

A fact checking web platform where the public and media outlets can collaborate with trained journalism students who are ready to check the overload of unconfirmed information, before having it published. Youtube demo video link for the project

Inspiration

Fake news has existed since the dawn of the printing press but in the age of internet and social media, it has found a tremendous application. Manipulation of algorithms of social media and search engines—to reach large audiences and mislead news consumers is a global trend now. Fact-Checker is an attempt to minimize the fake news that enters social media.

What it does

Fact-Checker is an end-to-end client-sever application that acts as a platform between journalist students and people who want to get their news checked before posting on social media platforms. It provides different functionalities to both parties. for general people :

  • Ability to create news information that requires verification.
  • View the feedback and credibility rating provided by the journalist students.

for the journalist students:

  • See active news information and join any project.
  • Rate and comment on any news info.
  • See the number of people are working on a news project.

Checklist of features included in this project

  • Registration of clients and Journalists.
  • Posting a news that the client wants to check if the news is a hoax or not.
  • Journalists are assigned for each news so the client knows that who all are working on the news.
  • Journalists can comment on the news post for the reviews and can vote for the post if the news is a hoax or not.
  • Clients can close the post after they got the required review from the Journalists.
  • A dashboard page to see all the news post which are posted and journalists can start reviewing the news based on it.

Installation Guide

  • install node and npm
  • npm run setup
  • create a .env file inside the server directory taking .env.example as reference
  • create a config.js file inside the client/src directory taking config.example.js as reference
  • npm run serve to run the full application

How we built it

Fact-Checker is a 3 tier application build using the MERN stack. the following technologies were used for the application:

  • React (Client-side Library)
  • Node (web server)
  • Express (http framework)
  • MongoDB (database)
  • mongoose (odm)

Challenges we ran into

  • Time constrain
  • Adding videos as a part of news information.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Fully functional end-to-end application with a beautiful UI :)

What we learned

  • Team work
  • Idea pooling

What's next for Fact Checker

  • Adding support for video
  • Building an AI model and train it using the responses from the journalists
  • Scale the application