Global Trends in Fact-Checking: A data-driven analysis of ClaimReview (original) (raw)
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Facts are at the core of the democratic process. Politicians neither always tell facts nor commit to what they pledge. Fact-checking refers to efforts focused on correcting misinformation, fighting falsehoods and bringing attention to facts and hard evidence. Fact-checking nowadays is mostly perceived to be a US-centered and journalistic phenomenon. However, in the recent few years, fact-checking has developed significantly and faster than the literature examining it. This paper explored the question of How fact-checking evolved to become a global phenomenon with direct impact on national and transnational politics? The author conducted a critical analysis of the global fact-checking ecosystem, stakeholders, and networks through data produced by Duke Reporters' Lab, International Fact Checking Network (IFCN) and interviews conducted in the annual fact-checking summit in Buenos Aires 2016. Throughout the paper, the author provided two main arguments on the globalisation of fact-checking; the distribution of the phenomenon worldwide and the evolution of the phenomenon to produce networks and institutions. By examining the first argument, a typology of different global trends of fact-checking is produced in relation to various lenses of types, targets and media. By examining the second argument, IFCN is studied as both a model of institutions and Transnational Advocacy Networks (TANs). The impact of this accelerating phenomenon is not restricted to tangible, immediate changes but also to a gradual cultural adoption of healthy skepticism towards news and politics. Finally, the paper concludes that fact-checking is no longer a US centered phenomenon. While this phenomenon is led by journalists, it is not exclusive to them. Civil society, entrepreneurs, and citizens also participate in the process of developing fact-checking.
What keeps fact-checking organizations up at night
Center for Media, Data & Society (CMDS), 2021
This article is based on responses from 30 fact-checking organizations to a questionnaire that was sent to a total of 102 fact-checking organizations in the world as following: 33 in Europe, one in Australia, 11 in Africa, 30 in Asia, 14 in North America and 13 in South America. They were asked to indicate the importance of the listed impact-related challenges on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 meaning “not at all important”, and 5 meaning “very important.” The goal of our survey was to understand the needs and challenges of fact- checking organizations related to the impact of their work as a base for a series of upcoming webinars with fact-checking groups aimed at helping their efforts that the Center for Media, Data & Society (CMDS) is planning to organize in 2021.
Exploring Fact-checked Claims and their Descriptive Statistics
2019
ClaimsKG is a RDF knowledge graph of fact-checked claims and related metadata, such as their truth values, authors or dates. It gathers information from popular fact-checking websites, annotates claims with related entities from DBpedia, and lifts the data into RDF by using a dedicated RDFS model. We present two open source, user-friendly Web-platforms operating on top of ClaimsKG: (1) the ClaimsKG Explorer an engine to conduct ad-hoc/faceted search over the graph, and (2) the ClaimsKG Statistical Observatory-a tool allowing to extract and visualize detailed statistics of the ClaimsKG data.
International Communication Gazette, 2018
Since 2003 and the emergence of FactCheck.org in the United States, fact-checking has expanded both domestically and internationally. As of February, 2018, the Duke Reporter’s Lab identified nearly 150 active initiatives around the world. Seen as a professional reform movement in the journalistic community (Graves, 2016), this research explores fact-checker perceptions of why the practice is spreading globally at this point in time. Using a phenomenological approach, two focus groups were conducted among fact-checkers during the 2015 Global Fact-checking Summit in London, England. Participants shared rich experiences about conditions and contexts surrounding the emergence and challenges facing their organizations including perceived public disempowerment, declines in journalism, technological changes, and socio-political strife. Ultimately, as the purpose of this research is to help future fact-checkers around the world become aware of the circumstances under which fact-checking is most likely to emerge and thrive (or fail), recommendations from current global practitioners are offered.
The Promise and Pitfalls of Fact-checking in 2022
Science and Society: Journal of Political and Moral Theory, 2024
Given the evolution and growth of fact-checking around the globe, practitioners and academics have been gathering with increasing frequency to discuss the state of the enterprise. The continued interest in fact-checking suggests periodic updates on how the practice is evolving has merit.The present article is one such effort which briefly addresses the origins of fact-checking followed by an examination of some of the challenges and opportunities facing the enterprise.
The Fact-Checking Universe in Spring 2012: An Overview
By almost any measure, the 2012 presidential race is shaping up to be the most fact-checked electoral contest in American history. Every new debate and campaign ad yields a blizzard of fact-checking from the new full-time fact-checkers, from traditional news outlets in print and broadcast, and from partisan political organizations of various stripes. And though fact-checking still peaks before elections it is now a year-round enterprise that challenges political claims beyond the campaign trail. This increasingly crowded and contentious landscape raises at least two fundamental questions. First, who counts as a legitimate fact-checker? The various kinds of fact-checking at work both inside and outside of journalism must be considered in light of their methods, their audiences, and their goals. And second, how effective are fact-checkers—or how effective could they be—in countering widespread misinformation in American political life? The success of the fact-checkers must be assessed in three related areas: changing people’s minds, changing journalism, and changing the political conversation. Can fact-checking really stop a lie in its tracks? Can public figures be shamed into being more honest? Or has the damage been done by the time the fact-checkers intervene? This report reviews the shape of the fact-checking landscape today. It pays special attention to the divide between partisan and nonpartisan fact-checkers, and between fact-checking and conventional reporting. It then examines what we know and what we don’t about the effectiveness of fact-checking, using the media footprint of various kinds of fact-checkers as an initial indicator of the influence these groups wield. Media analysis shows how political orientation limits fact-checkers’ impact in public discourse.
Making a Difference? A Critical Assessment of Fact-Checking in 2012
The enterprise of fact-checking continues to proliferate throughout the U.S. news media to an unprecedented degree. While many welcome this trend, others question the effectiveness of fact-checking and some have even begun to push back. A common critique is that fact- checking has failed to eradicate deceptive and misleading claims by politicians and is therefore ineffective. Others have concerns about the presence of bias in fact-checking work. This report draws on evidence from social science as well as recent interviews with reporters, fact-checkers, critics, and political figures to consider these issues and how they played out during the 2012 campaign. Because fact-checking is relatively young, robust metrics to empirically measure its effectiveness are still being established. Hence, a recurring theme in this report is the difficulty in definitively distinguishing the effects of fact-checking.
Checking how fact-checkers check
Research & Politics, 2018
Fact-checking has gained prominence as a movement for revitalizing truth-seeking ideals in journalism. While fact-checkers are often assumed to code facts accurately, few studies have formally assessed fact-checkers’ overall performance. I evaluated the performance of two major fact-checkers in the USA, Fact Checker and Politifact, comparing their inter-rater reliability using a method that is regularly employed across the social sciences. Surprisingly, only one in 10 statements was found to be fact-checked by both fact-checkers. Regarding claims evaluated by both organizations, the fact-checkers performed fairly well on outright falsehoods or obvious truths; however, the agreement rate was much lower for statements in the more ambiguous scoring range (that is, “Half True” or “Mostly False”). The results suggest that fact-checking is difficult, and that validation is challenging. Fact-checkers rarely evaluate statements that are exactly the same, and disagree more often than one mig...
Revisiting the Epistemology of Fact-Checking
Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society, 2015
Joseph E. Uscinski and Ryden W. Butler (2013) argue that fact- checking should be condemned to the dustbin of history because the methods fact- checkers use to select statements, consider evidence, and render judgment fail to stand up to the rigors of scientific inquiry and threaten to stifle political debate. However, the premises upon which they build their arguments are flawed. By sampling from multiple “fact-checking agencies” that do not practice fact-checking on a regular basis in a consistent manner, they perpetuate the selection effects they criticize and thus undermine their own position. Furthermore, not only do their arguments suffer from overgeneralization, they fail to offer empirical quantification to support some of their anecdotal criticisms. This rejoinder offers a study demonstrating a high level of consistency in fact-checking and argues that as long as unambiguous practices of deception continue, fact-checking has an important role to play in the United States and around the world.
The presence of unexpected biases in online fact-checking
Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review, 2021
The increasing amount of information online makes it challenging to judge what to believe or discredit. Fact-checking unverified claims shared on platforms, like social media, can play a critical role in correcting misbeliefs. The current study demonstrates how the effect of fact-checking can vary by several factors. We show that fact-checking helps self-correct one's views among young adults. However, this effect is weaker for individuals who perceived the claim negatively at first. Furthermore, borderline messages like “Lack of Evidence” can be perceived as false rather than neutral. We explain these biases via human cognitive mechanisms that avoid risk and uncertainty.