Break the bias, 'Correct the Internet' to make women in sports more visible

Google ‘who has scored the most goals in international football?’ The internet will tell you it's Cristiano Ronaldo with 118. However, Canada’s Christine Sinclair holds the record with 190.

Search ‘which tennis player has spent the longest time ranked number 1?’ The fact: Steffi Graf, the internet insists it’s Novak Djokovic.

The internet is a wonderful search tool, but not always the most accurate. It has learnt our bias and prioritises male athletes in search results, even when the facts put women first. A new global initiative by DDB Group Aotearoa NZ is trying to change that.

Led by Rebecca Sowden, a former New Zealand Football Fern, ‘Correct the Internet’ is designed to lift the lid on the many ways female athletes are disadvantaged in sports. The idea is to untrain the internet’s bias by make sportswomen more visible by simply reflecting their rightful achievements.

The campaign features a 60-second film talks about the impact of search inconsistencies from the viewpoint of a young girl. Standing in the middle of an empty stadium, seating thousands of voice assistant devices, the girl asks the internet who has scored the most goals in international football. Receiving a confusing (and inaccurate) answer, she is somewhat baffled, as the devices switch themselves off. The spot ends with a call-to-action driving viewers to help fix the internet’s algorithm which draws so much from media’s inherent preferences.

According to Correct The Internet, "Many of the world’s best athletes are women. And many of the world’s sporting records are held by women. But due to human bias, our search engines have learnt to prioritise sportsmen in our search results, even when the facts put sportswomen first. We want to change that.

"By using each search engine’s inbuilt feedback function to send feedback whenever we find something wrong, we can get the inconsistencies in our search results logged and fixed. So we’re collecting the incorrect search results, and have built a tool so you can help us correct them with just a couple of clicks. The internet has learnt our bias. We created it. We have the power to fix it."

The campaign launches with a tool that makes it easy to send feedback on factual inconsistencies on the internet. The tool is hosted on the Correct The Internet website.

Credits:

Agency: DDB Group Aotearoa

Production: Finch
Director: Lex Hodge
Managing Director/Executive Producer: Corey Esse
Executive Producer: Rebekah Kelly
Producer: Sarah Cook
DOP: Gin Loane
Second Camera: Ben Rowsell
Art Director: Sam Evans
Casting: Catch/FINCH
Post House for Edit: Atticus
Editor: Jack Hutchings
Post House for Grade : Atticus
Colourist: Pete Richie
Post House for VFX: Atticus
Lead VFX artist: Stu Bedford
Sound Company: Liquid Studios
Sound Person Craig: Matuschka
Music Company: Liquid Studios
Composer: Peter Van der Fluit

Partner and Supporters

Correct the Internet – Founding Partner: Rebecca Sowden
Team Heroine | Supporter of Football For the Goals: Rebecca Sowden
New Zealand Football
Women in Sport Aotearoa [WISPA]
Women in Sport Australia
Fearless Women
Eden Park
Mediaworks
PHD
Warner Discovery
Phantom Billstickers
TVNZ
UN Department of Global Communications – Outreach Division: Maher Nasser