ChainReact will foster collective awareness of corporate network impacts and channel that awareness to drive
social change. We have divided this mission into the following three main objectives, each of which is subdivided
into clear, measurable subgoals:
Objective 1: Identify irresponsible corporate activity
While it is already possible to aggregate existing source material (news, CSR reports, etc) about corporate
activity on WikiRate.org, WikiRate is primarily presented as a site for data interpretation and as such is not
ideally placed for soliciting and managing original source material, particularly from disadvantaged
populations. Therefore ChainReact proposes to create TalkFree.
- Subgoal A: Create a multilingual reporting platform, provisionally named “TalkFree”, to solicit reports about corporate behaviour. TalkFree will allow any individual or organisation to conduct customized reporting campaigns. It will support many modes of reporting, including text messages, text, pictures, audio and video. The software will support customization via “settings” so campaigns can be tailored to the needs of different issues, localities, and environments.
- Subgoal B: Run at least three reporting campaigns sponsored by international advocacy groups to drive participation on TalkFree. Each campaign will exploit different campaign settings to provide preliminary feedback about the efficacy of different engagement strategies.
Objective 2: Connect issues at corporate networks’ edges to network drivers TalkFree reports need to be tagged with companies, and those companies need to be connected via network maps to the larger companies that ultimately drive the corporate networks in question.
- Subgoal A: Seed and make navigable ChainReact’s corporate relationship mapping data by automated processing of official public documents and cross-platform integrations. OpenCorporates’ enhancements to their already-extensive corporate mapping will include control networks, brand networks, and supplier networks. Corporate entities on WikiRate will be mapped to OpenCorporates, and network data will be used on both TalkFree and WikiRate to offer a structured analogue of Wikipedia’s disambiguation pages to support corporate brand disambiguation when reading or contributing information
- Subgoal B: Deepen and improve corporate network maps by engaging corporations and their stakeholders via disclosure outreach. Both on TalkFree and WikiRate, contributors will be able to clarify or extend OpenCorporate’s network mapping. Reports and supporting information submitted to TalkFree (see Objective 1 Subgoal B) may uncover new links which are not documented elsewhere. WikiRate will also conduct top-down campaigns by engaging with companies to support the mapping of their supplier networks. We will work with Walk Free’s extensive corporate network to secure buy-in from a few global companies who perceive a competitive advantage from supplier network disclosure.
Objective 3: Incentivize companies to address network issues Companies will be incentivized to act on the above data via metric-driven media campaigns.
- Subgoal A: Support community development of network-aware corporate metrics on WikiRate.org. WikiRate community members can design and create metrics with either directly-entered or calculated values. Network-aware metrics will be able to traverse a company’s relationships and weigh corporate network performance (including, often, a major premium on transparency) according to metric designer specifications. As with all metrics on WikiRate, community members will then discuss and vote on metric designs, and the best-regarded metrics will be given highest site prominence.
- Subgoal B: Conduct integrated issue-focused ChainReact media campaigns that highlight corporate performance. Working with major advocacy groups, ChainReact will design campaigns around specific hot-button issues. Walk Free will design and publicize our first such campaign, which will focus on driving attention to the impacts of corporate supplier networks on modern slavery.