User:Daria Cybulska (WMUK)

Daria Cybulska Director of Programmes and Evaluation, Wikimedia UK

Biography Daria studied Philosophy at Kings College London, and supported a number of organisations in the charity sector after graduating. Daria has worked at Wikimedia UK since 2012, initially focusing on events, outreach, partnerships, and community development, and now serving as the Director of Programmes and Evaluation. Wikimedia UK is an independent UK-based charity focusing on programs and advocacy for open knowledge but is a part of the global Wikimedia movement. Daria was initially drawn to Wikimedia because of its open, start-up character, and the beauty of people building on each others’ contributions. Since then she has developed programs to Increase Knowledge Equity via bringing diverse people and content onto Wikimedia projects. In the last few years, she collaborated on Wikimedia’s 2030 global strategy with colleagues across the globe, a process that brought many reflections about accessibility, inclusion, and equity within collaborative knowledge projects. Daria is a trustee at Global Dialogue - a field building organisation for funders, a platform for philanthropic partnerships within human rights space.

My work Being a part of the Senior Management Team, I report to the Wikimedia UK’s CEO, ensuring the effective delivery of all aspects of programme management. I have a high ­level of responsibility for planning and implementing the strategic development of Wikimedia UK activity plan, budget management, staff team, volunteer and intern management, have strong focus on effective relationship building and promotion of trust with the board and the broader Wikimedia community. I particularly focus on building external partnerships and evaluation of the charity's activities. ...more

Contact me Email: daria.cybulskawikimedia.org.uk

Churchill Fellowship 2023-24

I was awarded a 2023/24 Churchill Fellowship. I will visit Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan, to identify new approaches and tools available to communities for safe and efficient activism online. I will be using the learning captured to improve work she delivers in the UK.

The fellowship seeks to identify new approaches and tools available to communities for safe and efficient self-organising online. It looks at civil society, shrinking civic space, proactive responses from communities to threats such as internet disruptions, online harassment, and general digital authoritarianism. Strong civil society empowers people to take collective action for good, outside of the State or business. Coming from Poland, I value the richness of UK civil society, yet am attuned to how it could be silenced.

My research focuses on Central Asia, where threats to online civil societies are real and immediate. But civil society is pushing back in innovative ways. UK civic space is more open - but protecting our civic space isn’t getting the attention it needs. My findings will be directly applicable to my work at Wikimedia.

I will explore how civil society in Central Asia, operating within a shrinking physical civic space, has developed online. My research questions are:

• What tools have they developed, which could be useful in the UK context?
• What resources, skills and modes of organisation make it possible for them to be effective?
• Which of their solutions might be applicable in the UK context?

I am to investigate how networks of online activists in my target countries

• Create the architecture of collaboration and activism
• Create and share knowledge online
• Move action from the virtual to the physical world – and back again

Based on what I learn, I aim to produce:

• a toolkit for UK users based on my learning
• a new method to facilitate effective online collaboration within British civil society.

The Churchill Fellowship is the UK’s national memorial to Sir Winston Churchill. It promotes the global exchange of ideas and understanding between peoples, through the work of the Fellows we appoint each year.

I'm is seeking contacts both in Central Asia, and back in the UK for dissemination of findings. Contact me on daria.cybulskawikimedia.org.uk

https://www.churchillfellowship.org/ideas-experts/fellows-directory/daria-cybulska/

Possible outputs

The ultimate aim of the research project is to contribute to building a better equipped, more empowered, and resilient civil society in the UK. This resilience is an urgent need and has a long-term benefit of nurturing our democracy and creating a vibrant public space. We need new ideas to protect the two ideas at the heart of functioning liberal democracies: truth and privacy.  

I have great ambitions for this project. I’ve applied for the fellowship before and still believe I have something useful to contribute. I hope to see change at two specific levels

• I hope the toolkit I create will be taken up by groups of many different kinds when they go about their activities. Instead of asking, ‘should we have a Facebook page’, groups will be able to ask, what kind of online space facilitates the best collaboration; what is the most appropriate architecture; what pitfalls should we avoid?
• My learning will have a reach through my professional networks – especially through the Wikipedia movement and through Global Dialogue, but also in the many organisations with which we collaborate.

Truth Detectives

information literacy skills of conspiracy theorists (AKO Storytelling Institute Fellowship 2023-24)

In 2023-24 I was a fellow at the AKO Storytelling Institute, based at the University Arts London. The Institute is investigating the theory and practice of storytelling-for-change, and in that works across disciplines - art, campaigning, social change and social impact, research, impact production, strategic communications, media, product design, philanthropy. In 2023 12 fellows were chosen (https://www.arts.ac.uk/storytelling-institute/fellowship) for a 9 month programme to explore how storytelling can lead to social change. Our theme was Truth and Lies, investigating the relationship between storytelling and misinformation, and the potential for storytelling to address complex threats posed by misinformation.

Project overview

Within the fellowship, I investigated information literacy skills of conspiracy theories followers. It was an exploration of how emotion shows up in critical thinking, and how, if not included in information literacy education, it can derail the learning process, while also fuelling polarisation.

The starting point of this project is an observation that the narrative around building information literacy skills sounds very similar to how conspiracy theorists talk about their approach to research. Shared phrases include - check sources, don’t immediately trust what you see, connect the dots, think about who funded the information, do your own research, etc.

Are information literacy educators closer than we realise to a conspiracy theorists approach to engaging with information? What follows is a series of questions that aim to be an invitation for reflection on how information literacy and critical thinking is taught:

• What are the similarities between information literacy education resources and those seen in shared methodologies employed by conspiracy theorists? What are the main themes?
• If conspiracists are appropriating the language of information literacy, what can educators learn from “the other side”? What are the conspiracists getting right?
• Is information literacy education pushing some people into conspiratorial approaches, by conveying a distrustful approach to the information ecosystem, and giving them skills and approaches which resonate with conspiracy theorists?

It’s challenging to pinpoint the origins of this similarity in ‘critical thinking’, scepticism and individualism narratives. While it’s possible that it stems from people wanting similar things - dig deeper into information, conduct exciting research - it has been shown that some of this comes from conspiracy theorists actually appropriating research discourse, which in itself can be a tool for educators to include in their teaching methods and tips.

Misinformation and conspiracy theories can drive polarisation in society, they can divide how we think and support a situation where we don’t even share the same view on reality. However, by promoting simplistic arguments about being cleverer than others, information literacy tools can encourage self-righteousness and possibly even closed mindedness, making it hard to consider or connect with those with different values and ideas (and conversely the conspiracist side talks about others in a dismissive way too). Putting down and dismissing groups following and spreading disinformation in general, and conspiracy theories in particular, can in fact drive further polarisation. A narrative change away from a disdainful view of those believing disinformation or conspiracy theories, towards recognising a common love of research or skillfull use of emotions, may actually push against some of the polarising effects of misinformation.

Output

The fellowship concluded in two outputs - a research booklet summarising the investigation of narratives around conspiracy theories and thus how information literacy education should adapt, and a creative response in a form of a graphic novel which illustrates the discussed ideas.