LOGBOOK
Fact Checking
It is important to move beyond recent narratives of “facts” and “fake news” and immediate political and social moments, to emphasize fact checking position in a wider consideration of human nature, interaction, and our inter-relatedness. Simply put, fact-checking is a form of critical, investigative inquiry. It includes a wide range of approaches and practices. But there is a history behind fact-checking and the contemporary need for it.
The use of facts and storytelling as a tool of political mobilization has been a long-established means to persuade the public of a group consensus.
The network effect of social media has broadened the sources of information and thus the construction of our narratives. Social media has also removed a primary filter of journalists as the establishment of truth teller. Some politicians and opinion makers have seized upon this opportunity as an exercise of power.
So, what is the relationship between facts and opinions? Opinions can be informed by facts, or by the purposeful denial of them if a group consensus compels one so. And nowadays, social media networks present a new and powerful tool to manipulate consent.
Therefore, in recent years, fact-checking has become more prevalent in journalism. This is reflected in the increasing numbers of fact-checking organisations being established internationally.
As it ever was, fact-checking is no guarantee against a group of people deciding to ignore the evidence of factual truths, but without the effort of fact-checking, we surrender each of our reality to others. Fact checking emphasises that we should remain skeptical for our own survival.
The spread of misinformation is inherently human.
Part of the approach of fact-checking is the awareness of the cognitive biases innate to each of us. While these biases help us navigate everyday life, they can cause us to overlook relevant facts, even when they are clearly presented.
In this preregistered but not yet peer-reviewed manuscript, two Yale researchers found a positive correlation between analytical thinking and the capacity to distinguish fake news from real.
Respondents were showed "Facebook-like" posts carrying real or fake news. Across three different study designs, respondents with higher results on a Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) were found to be less likely to incorrectly rate as accurate a fake news headline. (The test asks questions familiar to readers of Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, such as: "A bat and ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?")
Analytic thinking was associated with more accurate spotting of fake and real news regardless of respondents' political ideology. This would suggest that building critical thinking skills could be an effective instrument against fake news.
One of the studies also found that "removing the sources from the news stories had no effect on perceptions of accuracy," which seems to run counter to the rationale behind recent efforts to increase the visibility of article publishers on social media feeds.
Social media sentiment analysis could offer lessons on building trust in fact-checking. (Trust and Distrust in Online Fact-Checking Services By Petter Bae Brandtzaeg, Asbjørn Følstad Communications of the ACM. Read it here.)
This study evaluated online user perceptions of Factcheck.org, Snopes.com and StopFake.org. Sentences with the phrase "Factcheck.org is" or "Snopes is" were collected from Facebook, Twitter and a selection of discussion forums in the six months from October 2014 to March 2015. Because Facebook crawling is limited to pages with more than 3,500 likes or groups with more than 500 members, the sample was stunted. In the end, 395 posts were coded for Snopes, 130 for StopFake and a mere 80 for Factcheck.org.
Facebook pages for the two U.S. sites have hundreds of thousands of likes, so the findings that a majority of comments were negative ought to be read in light of the sample limitations. Still, the paper's coding of comments along themes of usefulness, ability, benevolence and integrity — and splitting across positive and negative sentiment — offers a template for future analysis.
Getting a global picture of what commenters are saying about active fact-checkers should help suggest new approaches to increase audience trust. For instance, if a majority of critical users accuse a fact-checking project of bias, it could take more steps to enforce and display nonpartisanship.