Meedan team

Our story

From Meedan’s earliest days, we’ve prioritized worldwide connection and collaboration.

2003
Moved by public debate and protest following the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Ed Bice launches the People’s Opinions Project, a new effort to share and translate diverse viewpoints across the globe.
2006
The organization is officially established as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in San Francisco, with Bice at the helm. The team begins work on news.meedan.net, an initiative to connect consumers of Arabic- and English-language media.
2011 - 2012
Tahrir square
Tahrir Square, Nov. 27, 2012
Photo by Gigi Ibrahim, CC BY 2.0
As popular uprisings sweep across the Arab region, Meedan supports social media-based journalism and translation efforts, including Speak2Tweet, an initiative to publicize Egyptian voice messages during internet outages.

Meedan develops Checkdesk in time for the 2012 Egyptian presidential election, partnering with Egyptian newsrooms to monitor social media content.
2013
Checkdesk expands its user base to media and civil society partners in Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine.

Meedan develops Bridge, another new tool that helps support collaborative social media translation. Meedan also wins a British Research Council award to deploy a version of its multilingual annotation and conversation platform for religious scholars.

“After this, we both took up golf during the week and started eating fancy dinners at the local Country Club... Ha. This is not what happened at all. We suck at golf and love eating Guzman Y Gomez.”

Adam, Co-founder of Lumio

2016

Checkdesk becomes Check. The product is rebuilt to support collaborative verification and help partner organizations share data during crucial moments like elections and natural disasters.

Check provides key infrastructure for Electionland, a joint effort from media organizations, technology companies, and journalism schools to cover the 2016 election in the U.S. Spearheaded by ProPublica and Google News Lab, Electionland represents one of the largest efforts in U.S. history to collaboratively cover voting issues in real time. The project goes on to earn recognition from the Online News Association.

2017
Checkcon Conference

CheckCon conference in Beirut
Photo by Stephanie Ghanem

2018
Meedan’s Pop-Up Newsroom designs and supports Verificado, a coalition of 90 media partners covering Mexico’s national elections. The project earns another Online News Association award.
2019
Building on previous programmatic efforts at Meedan, a new initiative called Check Global commences to support a high-impact network of media organizations, human rights defenders, and archivists across dozens of countries.

Meedan also partners with WhatsApp to pilot Meta's third-party fact-checking program in Brazil, India, and the U.S. Meedan then provides key technical and programmatic infrastructure for Meta’s third-party fact-checking partners running tiplines on WhatsApp in the Larger World.
2020
Digital Health Lab
🚀 relume launches
Meedan’s Digital Health Lab, first established in 2019, shifts into high gear as the COVID-19 pandemic spreads across the globe. The team creates a rapid-response framework for connecting fact-checking organizations, journalists, and other community information leaders to health experts worldwide.
2022
Careers

Meedan team members at a retreat in Valencia, Spain

Meedan partners with Rappler and the Google News Initiative to launch #FactsFirstPH, a project that brings together more than 140 civil society organizations, newsrooms, and civic groups to provide fact-checking for the Philippine presidential election. The project earns an award at GlobalFact 9.

Meedan also joins with Brazil’s leading fact-checking organizations to form Confirma, an election coalition that works in partnership with Brazil’s electoral court and distributes fact-checks to a massive WhatsApp audience. Confirma goes on to earn an award at GlobalFact 10.

Further, the Independent Media Response Fund is created through Check Global to award microgrants, training, and networking opportunities to small and medium-sized media organizations across the Larger World with an initial focus on climate misinformation.
2024
🚀 relume launches
Skoll Awards
Meedan founder and CEO Ed Bice receiving a 2024 Skoll Award for Social Innovation
Photo courtesy of the Skoll Foundation
Following decades of dedicated work in programming and technology development, Meedan is honored with a prestigious Skoll Award for Social Innovation.
2025
Digital Health Lab
🚀 relume launches
Ed Bice hands the reins to Dr. Dima Saber, who becomes Meedan’s executive director. Bice continues to support the organization by serving on the board of directors.