Unconscious bias is insidious, and it’s downright toxic when it comes to the technology we rely on to navigate and learn about the world. Thanks to the phenomenon I briefly described, we tend to automatically assume that the average human being is male, and when asked to imagine a professional such as a scientist, a doctor, or a football player, We tend to imagine: Guy.
Humanity has incorporated it into the Internet and has had a tremendous impact on women’s sports. These sportswomen did not seem to exist.
It affects the real world. A teenage girl is much more likely to quit sports than her teenage boy, which has lifelong effects on their health and well-being. Due to the drastic decrease in potential female role models, we are losing heroines who can encourage more participation.
DDB Aotearoa NZ has launched a new campaign to draw attention to this disparity. A powerful movie in which a little girl talks to a stadium full of smart her speakers. She asks who has scored the most goals in international football. It is also recommended to visit her website on the correct internet to combat this prejudice.
This is a timely campaign as New Zealand will host the FIFA Women’s World Cup alongside Australia later this year. Laura Swinton of LBB spoke with Gary Steele, her CCO of her DDB Aotearoa.
LBB> How did the relationship between Collect the Internet and DDB Aotearoa come about?
Gary> The problem was first discovered when DDB Aotearoa NZ was promoting business related to the FIFA Women’s World Cup. In researching facts about the world’s top soccer players, the team discovered that women hold many of the soccer records. Then the internet was incorrectly showing men higher than women who were statistically superior in search results. I was researching players and faced the same problem. This made the situation even more serious.
All this was happening in New Zealand, where women’s sport had never been more in the spotlight. It just seemed wrong that people, including our young daughters and nieces, were being fed false facts at a time when social conditions were pushing sportswomen to champions more than ever before. We started digging deeper beyond football and found a growing number of false search results across many sports. I knew this wasn’t right, so the idea was born to fix the internet.
It quickly evolved into a highly collaborative and curious process, with everyone involved contributing their individual skill sets and working together towards a single goal.
“We have Internet” is led by Team Heroine owner Rebecca Sowden and supported by the United Nations “Football for the Goals”. This is because Women in Sport Aotearoa (WISPA), Women Sport Australia, New Zealand Football, and many famous athletes, including England Rugby Red Rose player Shauna Brown and New Zealand Footballer Fern Maykaira Moore, have been featured in search engines. We are working towards a common goal of fixing erroneous results.
LBB> What was “Correct the Internet” really trying to achieve? Also, could you describe what you discovered about the scope of the problem?
Gary> It was working with Team Heroine to help female athletes find ways to get the recognition they deserve. That’s when the right internet was born. It turns out that prejudice is much deeper than we imagined.
Search engine algorithms are trained based on human behavior and are designed to give users what they want when it comes to content. The campaign acknowledges that we, the public, have entered details into the Internet that reflect our society’s historical and inherent biases.
There is no easy way to fix inconsistent search results. However, if you report these issues using the feedback feature built into each search engine, we can log and fix them. The problem is that most people aren’t familiar with the feedback feature. Also, recent design changes in some large search engines have made the feedback feature harder to find.
The team behind Correct The Internet has created a tool that makes it easy for anyone to submit feedback with just a few clicks. This allowed us to report the necessary feedback at the scale necessary to drive change.
tools are hosted www.correcttheinternet.com General users can visit the site to submit feedback messages to search engines, to notify them of incorrect search results, and to provide correct information. Over time, we aim to use this tool and the collective power of people to find and fix as many false search results as possible. These search results have been corrected over time through support from a global community of people willing to speak out and take concrete action to reverse some of the sexism that has dominated search engines. It will be done.
When it comes to the visual element of the LBB> campaign, the imagery of Alexa’s rows filling the stadium is very powerful.
Gary> First, let’s not call her Alexa. Since the problem is not just with one search engine, but with the whole internet, I decided to use a common smart home speaker. Giving the internet a voice through smart home speakers is not only a storytelling and practical solution, ensuring movies become conversations, but also putting thousands of spectators in stadiums. It felt like a powerful way to show that the audience is the audience themselves.I’m responsible for this bias. The internet is a reflection of us, with algorithms tuned to our behavior. This was how I would describe it in the context of sports.
LBB> I’m sure your Internet-focused ideas and topics would go well with screen images, so why did you decide to go the other way?
Gary> Yes, that’s the way it should be. The screens/words written in black and white speak to the idea that the information we are receiving is factual. In fact, it was the key to explaining the basis of these “facts”: social prejudices and human error. Having the ability to dispute information is the key here. As such, it shows that you have the power to resolve information.
LBB> Christine Sinclair’s story is very interesting if you dig into it. Of course, there are many examples of women’s achievements being overlooked in sports alone.So why is Christine Sinclair the strongest example?
Gary> I wanted to start with women’s football, which is often overlooked globally. This year is also the year of the FIFA Women’s World Cup, which will also be held here in New Zealand and Australia, so it was a good start to spark some conversation. Cristiano Ronaldo is also one of the most famous athletes on the planet. Christine Sinclair has not received the same recognition worldwide. And I think that’s why this juxtaposition was so powerful. She deserves her credit and fame, but our collective social prejudices have kept her from doing so, and she’s one of many sportswomen we try to make more visible on the internet. is just one of her girlfriends.
LBB> Why was Rex Hodge the ideal director for the project?
Gary > Lex was irresistible to stand with a young girl in a place that speaks truth to power and questions the way things are. Combining his work as an artist, he is passionate about performing within powerful visual environments.
LBB> Little girl performance is really important. She is very charming and emotional. She’s a tough one to work with in casting and with kids, but this spot hinges on that core performance. Who was she, how did you find her, and how did you help her pull off that amazing performance?
Gary> Her name is Serenity Andrews. An amazing young performer from Tāmaki Makourau (Auckland). Friends at Catch Casting took on the lead actors, and Lex went through the casting process, spending time with and getting to know the young performers. Serenity stood out immediately, and she and Rex connected on a deep level and rehearsed extensively to prepare Serenity for a very tight filming period.
Serenity is an incredibly adaptable and intuitive performer, and Lex worked with her to imagine a vast landscape of smart home speakers and the intimidating presence they would ultimately have. . They worked together to create the right tone for her work – Serenity is a little intimidated by the sheer size of this space, but when she knows the truth she wonders about something much bigger than herself. has a childlike quest for justice that inspires… a balancing act!
LBB> What was the most interesting creative challenge you faced with this project? How did you approach it?
Gary> At the start of the campaign, there were many creative and production challenges to creating an impactful film. It took a lot of effort from everyone involved to make an impactful piece on a low budget, in a short timeframe, and to make sure that it spoke to the enormity of the problem.
We had to make sure our smart home speakers were universal so that they could cater for all platforms and society at large, but we also wanted them to be brighter than usual so that the visual effect would be much more noticeable even from a distance. I had to. So I had to design and 3D print 60 of them in less than a week, and added more in post.
It also had to be shot at Eden Park, the National Stadium, and resonate on the deepest level. Having to work in tight conditions and a short shooting period, the wonderful DP Ginloan had to make plans to quickly execute the shoot with two units so that we could focus on the performance first and foremost. I didn’t.
The movie was powerful and needed people to talk. But we also had to ask ourselves how we could make a difference. What can be done to enable success? Going back from how search engines allow users to add and fix bugs, use built-in feedback features to automate this process and help users understand this. We’ve made it very easy to provide feedback. IP address. But, of course, the biggest search engine rolled out a new UI update for him, which made it even more difficult to provide feedback, and forced the feedback section of the site to open. . This was addressed in the tool using extensive UX testing to arrive at the current tool.
LBB> The campaign is already gaining traction outside of New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom. What are your ambitions in terms of helping this movement go global?
Gary> This campaign is already global, so many global partners like the United States Women’s National Team Players Association (USWNT) are supporting us. Everyone recognizes this as a big problem for all of us, and we can help people talk, share, and fix the internet for future generations searching for factual information.
We want a correct internet that consistently provides factual and correct answers.
Our dream is for an 8-year-old to enter a simple search question such as ‘Who scored the most goals in international football?’ while researching sports for a school assignment. That’s it. They practically get the correct answer.
That’s my ultimate goal, but for now, I want people all over the world to have a conversation. We also want people using the internet in general to be part of the solution by helping fix, not just being part of the conversation. the internet.
