Correct the Internet

The problem was first discovered when DDB recently researched facts about the world’s top footballers as part of a pitch. The team discovered that women held many of football’s records. However, when asking simple, ungendered questions to find these facts, the internet was incorrectly putting men ahead of the statistically superior women in its search results.

Many of the best athletes in the world are women. But due to human bias, our search engines have learned to prioritise male athletes in our search results, even when the facts put sportswomen first.

The campaign is the collective work of an international group of like-minded people who saw the need to get behind the cause, championed by Rebecca Sowden, founding partner of Correct The Internet and owner of United Nations’ ‘Football for the Goals’ member Team Heroine – an international sports marketing consultancy.

We let the world know buy creating a film. A social campaign that produced weekly incorrect search female statistics with corrected facts, posters, PR pack, educators pack, campaign look book, iconography, a website - and the tool itself.

We built the ‘Correct The Internet’ web tool. A website that serves you with biased search results, and clear instructions on how to report them.

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.

Inspired by activism design the campaign uses a simple duotone scheme of orange and black paired with bold typography to maximise its visibility.

The mark comes from a combination of the female symbol and Search icon. A slight detail in the cross bar of the female symbol doubles as a crossed out device echoing the redaction and search bar used in our ‘statistic’ search query.

The search results are overlayed with the correct Sports women and factually correct information.

For the tool, we started with a basic interactive prototype and conducted tests with people - search browsers often move the feedback buttons making it tricky so we had to iterate several times on how to best guide users. Also communicating the problem and what users can do. We looked at all the leading global search engines and provided instructions for all.

Now, a problem that has existed within search engines for decades has new momentum and is being solved, with search engines deploying new features to highlight women’s sport, offering both male and female results on searches.

Correct the Internet campaign aimed to create awareness and educate people on the inaccuracies of search engine results and ultimately make a difference.

I led the identity development and directed the website and tool design with Designer Elliot Oxbourough.