Checking the news: from conspiracy theories to fact checking

Question 1

Traditionally,
fact-checkers were employed

Answer 1

Traditionally,
fact-checkers were employed by newsrooms to proofread and verify factual claims
made by reporters in their articles.

Question 2

This genre of fact-checking evaluates the solidity
of

Answer 2

This genre of fact-checking evaluates the solidity
of the reporting, double-checks facts and figures, and serves as an overall round of
quality control for a news outlet’s content before publication

Question 3

fact-checking seeks .

Answer 3

fact-checking seeks to make politicians and other public figures accountable for
the truthfulness of their statements.

Question 4

Ex post” fact-checking concentrates primarily (but not exclusively) on s

Answer 4

Ex post” fact-checking concentrates primarily (but not exclusively) on political ads,
campaign speeches and party manifestos

Question 5

‘fake news’. The term, now co-opted

Answer 5

‘fake news’. The term, now co-opted and misused, describes entirely
fabricated sensationalist stories that reach enormous audiences by using social media
algorithms to their advantage.

Question 6

Debunking is a subset of fact-checking and requires

Answer 6

Debunking is a subset of fact-checking and requires a
specific set of skills that are in common with verification (especially of user-generated
content known as UGC - see Venn diagram below).

Question 7

Generally speaking, fact-checking is composed of three phases:

Answer 7

Finding fact-checkable claims by scouring through legislative records,
media outlets and social media. This process includes determining
which major public claims (a) can be fact-checked and (b) ought to be
fact-checked.
2. Finding the facts by looking for the best available evidence regarding the
claim at hand.
3. Correcting the record by evaluating the claim in light of the evidence,
usually on a scale of truthfulness.

Question 8

Confirmation bias

Answer 8

the tendency to process information
by looking for, or interpreting, information that is consistent with one’s existing beliefs.

Question 9

Motivated reasoning

Answer 9

Motivated cognition refers to the
unconscious tendency of individuals to fit their processing of information to conclusions
that suit some end or goal.

Question 10

Availability heuristic

Answer 10

A cognitive heuristic through which the
frequency or probability of an event is judged by the number of instances of it that
can readily be brought to mind.

Question 11

Real-time audience engagement

Answer 11

Real-time audience engagement has
given rise to crowdsourcing content, and even reporting tasks like verification can now
be outsourced to the audience

Question 12

With any verification, some general guidelines, offered by Kovach and Rosenstiel (2014)172
apply:

Answer 12

With any verification, some general guidelines, offered by Kovach and Rosenstiel (2014)172
apply:
ɒ Edit with scepticism
ɒ Keep an accuracy checklist
ɒ Assume nothing – don’t be misled by exploitation of signals associated with
“truthiness”173
ɒ Be cautious with anonymous sources

Question 13

Verification tools can be used to

Answer 13

Verification tools can be used to establish where a source has posted
from, but it is also possible to manually triangulate a source by analysing their social
media history to check for clues that could indicate the feasibility of them being in
a particular place at a particular time

Question 14

red flags” that can be uncovered through a simple
verification process that asks:

Answer 14

Is the content original, or has it been “scraped” from previous reporting and
re-appropriated misleadingly?
ɒ Has the content been digitally manipulated in some way180
ɒ Can we confirm the time and place of the photo/video capture, using
available metadata?
ɒ Can we confirm the time and place of the photo/video capture, using visual
clues in the content?

Question 15

To find red flags efficiently, we also need to understand the different types of common
false or misleading visual content:

Answer 15

Wrong time/wrong place: the most common type of misleading visuals are
old visuals that are being re-shared with new claims about what they show.
Virality in such cases is often caused by accidental sharing, of content that
can be easy to debunk, but not easy to pull back181
ɒɒ Manipulated content: content that has been digitally manipulated using
photo or video editing software
ɒɒ Staged content: original content that has been created or shared with the
intent of misleading182