The study “Decoding Correction Strategies: How Fact-Checkers Uncover Falsehoods Across Countries” by Regina Cazzamatta from University of Erfurt systematically analyzed and compared fact-checking strategies across various countries in Europe and Latin America.
As a journalistic subgenre, fact-checking also employs strategies such as prebunking and raising media literacy, but the strategies analyzed in this article were reactive – traditional fact-checking, meaning debunking. The current research on specific tactics fact-checkers use is somewhat limited, with studies focusing on issues such as epistemologies, transparency, and effects.
The research questions that guided the study were as follows: RQ1: What are the prevalent debunking tactics employed by fact-checkers? RQ2: To what extent do these tactics vary based on the target of verification (online rumors or public figures/statements)? RQ3: What commonalities and differences are identified across countries and organizations?
Eight countries and 23 fact-checking organizations were analyzed. The European countries represented different media ecologies, as per Hallin and Mancini (2004): Liberal in the case of the UK, Mediterranean in the case of Spain and Portugal, and Democratic Corporatist in the case of Germany. The Latin American countries were chosen by varying levels of democracy and resiliency to disinformation: they were Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela and Chile.
A total of 13,169 links published between January and December 2022 were collected, and a representative sample of 3,292 was chosen, and with the removal of duplicates and such, a total 3,154 were chosen for coding.
The most commonly used debunking tactics were, from the least common to the most: absence of official statistics (1,3%), delegitimization (6,2%), data quality examination (7,0%), infographics (7,9%), contacting author (11,1%), official announcement (13,4%), highlighting inaccuracies (14,3%), absence of public record (15,5%), contacting the target (23,1%), recycled interviews (23,4%), visuals (25,0%), experts (27,0%), forensic (33,9%), previous debunking (46,9%), background information (52,4%), checking the origins (57,2%), and documentation (93,8%).
The variations between countries revealed that provided documentation was common in all countries, while tracing the origins was minimally used in Portugal but quite frequently in Germany. It was also less employed in Brazil and highly used in Chile. Forensic elements were strongly utilized in Chile and almost never in Portugal.
The use of visuals was expected in Spain and far less in the UK. These three aforementioned strategies had the highest variance between different countries and related to the profile of the fact-checking organizations – being more used in countries with a stronger focus on social media monitoring.
In summary, there were variations between countries and organizations in fact-checking tactics. The study did not measure the effectiveness of the tactics, like the author points out, but catalogues the tactics and can serve as a template for further research, for example about the US.
The article “Decoding Correction Strategies: How Fact-Checkers Uncover Falsehoods Across Countries” by Regina Cazzamatta is in Journalism Studies. (open access).
Picture: Weighing Truth Facts and Fake News. 3D Render. By Hartono Creative Studio.
License Unsplash.
