1. “I am not seeing any highlighted words on a page even though some of those words will almost certainly be in the database for that category”
2. “I am not seeing the names of some specific organizations highlighted on a page”
3. “Popups are slow to load”
4. “WhoFundsWho is highlighting too many things on a page and it’s distracting”
5. “Why isn’t WhoFundsWho highlighting the name of this expert that I know for sure works at this think tank?”
6. “When WhoFundsWho highlights a word that was already hyperlinked on the page I can’t open the original link anymore because clicking on it now opens the popup instead (or vice versa)”

“I am not seeing any highlighted words on a page even though some of those words will almost certainly be in the database for that category”

Make sure you have activated WhoFundsWho by selecting ‘on’ and refreshing the screen or opening a new tab or window.

If you still don’t see highlighted words, then the words may not actually be in the database or there may be a technical problem. You can test for each category which of these is the case by trying the words below that are definitely in the database:

• Think tanks: Atlantic Council
• Political funding: Adam Schiff
• Disinformation: Bellingcat
• Public health: Canadian Public Health Association
• Revolving door: Jack Keane
• Gates Foundation: World Health Organization
• Wellcome Trust: Vivek Nityananda
• World Economic Forum: Chrystia Freeland

If

• ‘on’ rather than ‘off’ is selected in the menu
• the screen is refreshed
• the right category is selected
• the right name for that category is selected
• and the name is spelled correctly

but the name is still not highlighted on the screen, you can try restarting your browser or computer, or reinstalling the extension. If nothing works, please send us a message using the contact form.

“I am not seeing the names of some specific organizations highlighted on a page”

If you made sure you selected the right category in the menu and you’re not seeing the name of a specific organization highlighted on a page even though it seems likely that the name should be in the database then that is either because:

• that organization is in fact not in the database

• the extension intentionally ignores the name of the organization

There are various reasons why the extension may intentionally ignore a name. Firstly, the names of some organizations are also very commonly used words. For example, ARM is a technology company and a World Economic Forum partner organization that is also part of a network of organizations active in the ‘countering disinformation’ industry. But of course ‘arm’ is also a semantically unrelated and very commonly used noun as well as a semantically unrelated and commonly used verb.

So to avoid getting too many distracting ‘false positive’ highlights on a page the extension ignores organizations whose names exactly match very commonly used words. We made a few exceptions for some key organizations such as Apple and Shell. 

The organizations that the extension now ignores are still in the database however. And you can still get popups for them. Here’s how: Just search for “[name of organization] database”, e.g. “arm database” or “PATH database”. Be sure to use the quotation marks. The extension will detect and highlight that specific combination of words and show you the proper popup.

If there is no place online where that specific combination of words can be found, then there is always this page on the current website that contains a list of all the organization names the extension intentionally ignores, but written using the appropriate convention. So you (and search engines) can always find that specific combination of words on this page to get a popup.

Another type of name that the intention intentionally ignores in order to avoid too many irrelevant highlights on a page are country names. Here too you can still get a popup by using a convention, namely “government of [country name]”, e.g. “government of Germany”.

Other types of names may not get highlighted because they can refer to different organizations in different countries. In that case search for “[name of organization] country”, e.g. “Demos United Kingdom” or “Demos United States”.

Similarly, different countries often have the same or similar types of departments. When the extension sees “Ministry of Foreign Affairs” on a page it won’t know whether this refers to the Czech, Dutch, Japanese etc ministry of foreign affairs. For that reason the extension will ignore occurrences of “Ministry of Foreign Affairs” unless they are preceded by a country name. So it will detect and highlight “Czechia Ministry of Foreign Affairs”.

Because many government departments in different countries, states or municipalities have the same name, the extension also uses specific conventions for the names of local, state, national and international government departments. For example, to get a specific country’s ministry of foreign affairs search for “[country name] ministry of foreign affairs” and the extension will detect it and highlight it in the results, e.g. “Belgium Ministry of Foreign Affairs”.

Similarly, because similar departments at different universities will often have the same name., the extension also uses a convention for universities. When referring to a department within a university the convention is “[department], [university]”, e.g. “Department of Physics, Washington State University”. When referring to a school or institute within a university the convention is “[school], [university]”, e.g. “School of Public Health, Harvard University”. When referring to a specific part of a university system that is designated by a location name, the convention is: “[university], [location]”, so for example “University of Texas, Arlington”.

For a full list of:

• the types of names that the extension intentionally ignores
• the conventions you can use to make the extension detect them after all
• the conventions used for international, national, state/provincial & local government departments
• the conventions used for schools, departments/faculties, universities

visit the page just mentioned.

“Popups are slow to load”

After installation the first few times you click on or hover over a link the popups may be (very) slow to load. But after those first few times all popups should load quickly and smoothly. If they don’t, try refreshing the screen or opening a new tab or window.

If they still don’t load or load very slowly, then check your internet connection or try opening other popups, i.e. hover over or click on some other highlighted names, and see if those load. If they do, then the problem may only be with that specific entry, which suggests a problem in the database. In that case, please send us a message using the contact form so we can look into it. If the other popups don’t load properly either, or if popups are frequently slow to load, then please let us know that too.

“WhoFundsWho is highlighting too many things on a page and it’s distracting”

There are at least three ways to deal with this:

• select fewer categories
• uncheck the ‘include people’ box so that for certain categories WhoFundsWho will only match organizations and not people
• turn the extension off and only turn it on when you want to use its functionality

“Why isn’t WhoFundsWho highlighting the name of this expert that I know for sure works at this think tank?”

Some possible causes:

• You forgot to check the ‘include people’ box in the menu.
• The database does not yet include personnel information for the think tank in question.
• The person was not working there at the time the personnel information for that think tank was compiled. Employees come and go and the database only has a snapshot. Our aim is to keep it up to date by checking and updating the information a few times a year.
• The way the name appears on a page is slightly different from how it appears in the database: For people much more so than for organizations it can be difficult to get the name exactly right as there are often different versions of a name. Suppose, for example, that an expert’s full name is Charles James Easterly. Sometimes their name will appear exactly like that but other times it may appear in any of the following forms:

Charles J. Easterly
Charles J Easterly
Charles Easterly
Chuck Easterly
Charles “Chuck” Easterly

Except for the political funding category we have not accounted for each of the different ways a name may appear on a page but tried to use the typical version of a name.

“When WhoFundsWho highlights a word that was already hyperlinked on the page I can’t open the original link anymore because clicking on it now opens the popup instead (or vice versa)”

You can solve this problem by selecting ‘hover’ instead of ‘click’ in the menu. That way, when you hover over the highlighted word the popup will appear and when you click on the word the normal URL will open.

You do have to make sure that you click pretty quickly or else the extension thinks you are hovering and will open the popup anyway.