HALLMARK CAMPAIGN

Correct the Internet

Is it really Cristiano Ronaldo? -Kaizeen Munshi

But that’s what the search results show! The internet shows Cristiano Ronaldo as the answer when you search for “Who has scored the most goals in international football?” When in reality it is actually Christine Sinclair, a woman, a Canadian professional soccer player who plays and captains both, National Women's Soccer League club, Portland Thorns FC and the Canadian national team. So doesn’t this feel like an inconsistent internet search result that’s putting women at a disadvantage? Yes, it actually does so. And an international group of like minded people have come together to highlight and course correct this internet inaccuracy and help the women's sporting community become more visible One of the founding members of this initiative is Rebecca Sowden, the owner of United Nations “Football for the goals” member “Team Heroine” , an international women ’ s sport and sponsorship consultancy and content hub

The campaign was jointly created by Finch, a film production company and DDB Group, Aotearoa who designed the film which shows a girl standing in the centre of a stadium asking the internet the pulsing Question of “Who has scored the highest goals in International football” to which the response she receives is “Christiano Ronaldo” and then she probes the internet asking “What about Christine

Sinclair?” And the girl realises that Christine has scored 190 goals which is more than what Christiano Ronaldo has scored but that’s about it The response to the earlier question remains the same. A bias that the internet has learned

So what did the team do to highlight and correct this inaccuracy? The team created a site www.correcttheinternet.com that hosts a tool which makes it easier for the public to report the issues through the search engine’s inbuilt feedback function. The team has identified certain factual inconsistencies over the internet that are listed on the website for instance, , “Who has won the most Cricket World Cup Titles?” After clicking on this Question, the next page displays what the internet provides as the answer to it which is "Australian men ’ s team with 5 titles” and what the actual answer to it should be which is “Australian Women's Team with 6 titles”. After which one is prompted to choose the internet browser on which he/she would like to correct the fact. And then simply copy the feedback they provide and paste it on the feedback mechanism of google that is present at the bottom of the search results page. A simple and easy way of correcting a tool like the search engine that has now become such an inevitable part of our daily lives

The campaign garnered support from wellknown athletes and high-profile sporting organizations such as English rugby’s Red Roses player, Shaunagh Brown, and Football Fern Meikayla Moore. It has also been featured in several news outlets and has been widely shared on social media. The in the initiative itself, while quite simply executed, had its essence in that very feature which grabbed eyeballs from all over the world.