369 results found for ‘“The week in fact-checking”’
The Week in Fact-Checking: Tragedy, compounded by misinformation
Last week’s shooting at a Florida high school that left 17 dead and several injured spawned the usual hoaxes that follow American tragedies: fake images of the shooter, posts claiming he was a member of Antifa, false identifications and phony screenshots of his Instagram account. Then there were those that aren’t so typical. Imposter tweets targeted journalists attempting to […]
The Week in Fact-Checking: The unexpected professionals behind fake news campaigns
Two curious researchers who wanted to get behind the scenes of disinformation campaigns in the Philippines were surprised at who they found there. It turns out the country’s advertising and public relations executives are playing a key role in disseminating misinformation, hiding in plain sight behind an army of highly organized freelancers. Read a summary; download the […]
The Week in Fact-Checking: Facebook’s baby steps
Alexios Mantzarlis reports from a closed-door meeting with Facebook officials and fact-checkers: “Facebook and its third-party fact-checking partners met at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., this week after a rocky 14 months of working together. (Daniel Funke has written about the fact-checkers’ concerns.) “My general takeaway is that Facebook is stepping up its commitment to this partnership […]
The Week in Fact-Checking: An army of fact-checkers for SOTU
For U.S. President Donald Trump’s annual State of the Union address Tuesdaynight, fact-checkers came out in force. They took to a new live fact-checking platform to provide context in real time. They posted fact checks to Twitter and Facebook as Trump spoke — some of which went viral. At one point, PolitiFact’s site went down briefly because of the rise in traffic. […]
The Week in Fact-Checking: There is hope for the universe
Over the past few years, academic work on fact-checking has blossomed. That’s why the International Fact-Checking Network today is launching a research database containing a curated list of studies that help further understanding of misinformation. The aim is to arm practitioners with interesting research they can use to inform their work. In other research news: In a […]
The Week in Fact-Checking: Blue Monday isn’t a thing but here are some other things
Our top story this week: Mariya Gabriel, the European Commissioner in charge of Digital Economy and Society, kickstarted on Monday the first meeting of the EU’s High Level Group on fake news. Alongside a series of public events, the High Level Group’s report will inform a communication from the Commission on the topic expected for April. Communications are policy documents, not […]
The Week in Fact-Checking: Facebook therapy, a new cookbook, Sweden’s fake news problem
It’s been a rocky year or so for Facebook’s and fact-checkers’ efforts to combat fake news on the platform. The Buzzsumo-crunching Craig Silverman found in December that engagement for major fake news stories was doing just great, thank you very much. Academics Guess, Nyhan and Reifler determined Facebook is by far the key referrer to fake news websites. But there may […]
The Week in Fact-Checking: New year, same old fake news
An analysis by BuzzFeed News shows that the 50 most viral fake stories of 2017 had more engagement than 2016’s top 50 list — despite Facebook’s partnership with fact-checkers. Disconcertingly, corresponding fact checks had only 0.5 percent of the Facebook engagement generated by hoaxes. But, some good news, maybe: This study found that falsified stories constitute a relatively small portion […]
The Week in Fact-Checking: Your top stories of 2017
It’s been a busy year for both the readers and authors of this newsletter. So for the last edition of 2017 (we’re taking next week off) we’re revisiting the 10 most-clicked articles from our newsletter. Scroll down to see which stories did best with our audience of fact-checking aficionados. Thanks for reading along this year, […]
The Week in Fact-Checking: Should you say ‘fake news’?
Politicians around the world are increasingly using Donald Trump’s favorite insult to discredit media reports they dislike. So should journalists abandon the term? In a Poynter article, The Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan says yes, because “fake news” has only become more weaponized since 2016. But PolitiFact’s Aaron Sharockman disagrees, saying the phrase still has some use for describing misinformation. […]