Fact-Checking
Narrative monitoring and argument-checking: Enhancing effectiveness in countering disinformation beyond fact-checking
Celia Ramos, Clara Jiménez-Cruz and Pablo Hernández-Escayola
In the October 2024 flash floods in Spain, social media posts falsely claimed authorities were concealing the number of casualties. The narrative centered on a flooded parking structure in Valencia, where hundreds of bodies were falsely claimed to be trapped. This narrative gained traction even after videos showing the premises had been evacuated.
Fact-Checking
Fact checking what matters: How a harms-based model for selecting claims works
Peter Cunliffe-Jones
Not all misinformation consequences are equal. Faced by hundreds of thousands of false claims online and offline every day, fact checkers need a robust way to identify the important ones to check. This scalable model—used by fact checkers in trials in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East since 2024—helps forecast the potential imminent and cumulative harms of different false claims and is an early warning system for society that focuses efforts on factually false claims that cause real-world harms.
Fact-Checking
Beyond compliance: How European fact checkers correct their own errors
Mato Brautović, Ivana Grkeš Tošović and Romana John
Fact checkers should maintain high standards of accountability because they hold unique positions in society by verifying content that can influence political practices and society as a whole. To maintain these professional standards, fact-checking network organizations such as the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) and the European Fact-Checking Standards Network (EFCSN) have established codes of standards, and fact-checking organizations should comply with them in a substantive way.
Fact-Checking
Fact-checking in the multipolar AI order: Between epistemic sovereignty and ambivalence
Gregory Asmolov
Fact-checking has become a key response to disinformation during crises and conflicts, but its role is increasingly contested due to concerns about its effectiveness and its co-optation by different political actors. In polarized, high-choice environments, fact-checking is often embedded within partisan and state-aligned infrastructures, shaping validation and rejection of knowledge claims.
Fact-Checking
Accountability in name only: Fact-checking under the EU’s Code of Practice on Disinformation
Madalina Botan
Major platforms constantly claim to fight disinformation and support the fact checking community, but their transparency reports and the empirical evidence from a survey of expert fact checkers across 21 EU countries show a different reality. This study finds that despite commitments made under EU regulations, expert fact checkers remain largely peripheral actors within the existing platform governance framework, with limited insight into how their work influences platform decisions.
Fact-Checking
Fact-checking at a crossroads: Fact checkers’ perspectives on Community Notes, AI integration, and design recommendations
Basak Bozkurt, Mohsen Mosleh and Helen Margetts
Social media platforms are increasingly using community-based verification systems, such as Community Notes, and AI systems to flag and contextualize potentially misleading content at scale. While these approaches promise speed and broad coverage, concerns about accuracy, bias, and transparency persist. Drawing on interviews with 29 fact checkers, we find that practitioners see community-based verification and AI Note Writers as complementary tools that can support, but not replace, professional fact-checking.