Levels of Fact-Checking

Spotting Fakes False Claims Too often news organizations play a major role in propagating hoaxes, false claims, questionable rumors, and dubious viral content, thereby polluting the digital information stream. Indeed, some so-called viral content doesn’t become truly viral until news websites choose to highlight it. In jumping on false claims and publishing it alongside hedging [...]

Selection Bias News organizations reporting rumors and unverified claims often do so in ways that bias the reader toward thinking the claim is true. The data collected using the Emergent database revealed that many news organizations pair an article about a rumor or unverified claim with a headline that declares it to be true. A [...]

Rumors/Gossips Today, rumors and gossips make their way online and quickly find an audience. It happens faster and with a degree of abundance that’s unlike anything in the history of journalism or communication. Rumors constantly emerge about conflict zones, athletes and celebrities, politicians, election campaigns, government programs, technology companies and their products, mergers and acquisitions, [...]

Unverified Content Many news sites apply little or no basic verification to the claims they pass on. Instead, they rely on linking-out to other media reports, which themselves often only cite other media reports as well. The story’s point of origin, once traced back through the chain of links, is often something posted on social [...]

Conflict of interest A conflict of interest can create an appearance of impropriety that can undermine the reliability of a content source. Any media organization has a conflict of interest in discussing anything that may impact its ability to communicate as it wants with its audience. Most media, when reporting a story which involves a [...]

Misinformation We live in a digital world. This means that we are constantly surrounded by information. A large amount of this information is solid, reliable, and verifiable. Sadly, there is also a lot of untrue "information" circulating the internet. This "information" which seems to be every bit as popular as actual and verifiable knowledge. So, [...]

Viral Stories In a world where fame can happen overnight (due to an astonishing discovery, or a viral video for example), it is important to ground oneself in knowledge and the pursuit of knowledge. Also, we live in a world where false statements can just as easily become viral as true ones and where untrue [...]

Confirmation bias This is the tendency to process information by looking for, or interpreting, information that is consistent with one’s existing beliefs. This biased approach to decision making is largely unintentional and often results in ignoring inconsistent information. Existing beliefs can include one’s expectations in a given situation and predictions about a particular outcome. People [...]