Wiki Loves Broadcast Ghana

Wiki Loves Broadcast Ghana is a subsidiary of the main Wiki Loves Broadcast project by the Wikipedia community that aims at strengthening collaboration with public broadcasters. The primary goal is to be able to freely use content from public broadcasters on Wikimedia projects. The project started in 2016 as an initiative by the German-speaking Wikipedia community, supported by Wikimedia Deutschland, and this has extended to Ghana and the Ghanaian languages.

Content produced by public broadcasters, especially when educational in nature, aligns well with the content of Wikimedia projects. Selected material from public broadcasters could in principle be reused on other platforms, including Wikimedia projects. However, a free Creative Commons license (CC BY-SA or above) is required for Wikimedia projects. Therefore, Wiki Loves broadcast urges public broadcasters to work towards free licenses for (parts of) their content and develop a new model of creating freely licensed content in consultation with all relevant stakeholders.

The possibility to upload and embed professionally produced, high-quality multimedia material can be a considerable improvement for Wikimedia projects. Furthermore, this approach would also end up benefiting teachers and improving school lessons, where copyrighted material cannot be fruitfully used in a legally unproblematic manner. Last but not least, it would help broadcasters themselves by creating a bigger audience for the educational content in question, therefore underscoring the broadcasters’ democratic legitimacy, supporting their fight against disinformation online and ultimately contributing to fulfill their educational mandate.

For content that cannot be used directly on the Wikimedia projects, public broadcasters should at least provide better access to their archives and online platforms, so that they can easily be referenced by Wikimedia projects.

Aims

Discuss the the release of content under a free Creative Commons license with public broadcasters and Wikimedia Deutschland. Move towards free CC licenses as a standard, particularly for educational content, on the long run.
Involve the communities of various projects, so they can participate in and supervise the embedding of new content. Public broadcasters can upload their content directly through verified accounts.
Introduce permanent links to content in the online platforms of public broadcasters.
Introduce the option to download content directly from the online platforms.
Convince public broadcasters to freely license and upload relevant press photos.