The study “A Case of Claims and Facts: Automated Fact-Checking the Future of Journalism’s Authority” by Patrick R. Johnson from University of Iowa used metajournalistic discourse analysis to analyze 137 articles about automated fact-checking to understand its role.
Graves, Nyhan, and Reifler (2016) claim that fact-checking is “one of the most significant innovations in journalistic practice in recent years”. This topic has been studied widely. Also, the role of artificial intelligence and automation in journalism has been studied, but this study focuses on the intersection of fact-checking and automation.
Fact-checking has also been seen as a necessary addition to journalistic authority. It is part of journalism’s quest for truth. In the article, the author sees automation as something that shifts journalism’s authority. Automated fact-checking offers both opportunities and threats – the automated systems are faster than journalists, but there are labor concerns and it may impact journalistic autonomy.
The materials for the study come from wo database, NexusUni and ProQuest. The time period for articles was 2015 to December 31, 2022. Keywords were used to find relevant articles in English. The 137 articles come from a variety of sources, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, and trade publications like Columbia Journalism Review and Poynter. Only 11 articles were from the first two years – reflecting the novelty of the topic.
The coverage of automated fact-checking (AFC) emphasized labor, democracy, and ethics. When it comes to labor, it has been claimed that a whole new era is at hand – the quantity of claims that journalists using automation can check is vast. However, AI cannot identify facts, humans must provide them. A journalist is needed to correct technological errors.
In 2019, it was written that AFC’s aren’t meant to replace people, but the expectation is that the human role will diminish gradually as machine learning improves. Still, AFC cannot manage the nuance in political speech, for example, so a human is still needed to monitor the output. In recent years, the discourse in the articles has been more about what the change entails.
The audience is also impacted. The audiences will need to learn how to access the fact-checks, turning the audience from passive into active participants. This will mean more audience engagement, but the fact-checks are still done for them.
When it comes to democracy, the most positive view on AFC is that it helps to curb the internet’s fake news problem by handling the vast amount of misinformation produced every day. AFC developers emphasize that the algorithms are just one part of a bigger change, and journalists are still needed to scour the net and to provide correct answers to truth databases.
The discourse on civic responsibilities and democracy thus focuses on fighting against fake news. Here, journalistic authority is dependent on the accountability of the automated software.
If AFC’s are capable of positioning attribution and accuracy at the center of their work, they can prove their authenticity. There is, however, a danger that audiences will become overly reliant on AFC and see it as the definitive truth, even if it can be mistaken at times, and what is more, if a claim by a politician or so does not receive a fact-check it will then be viewed as true.
In summary, while AFC can help combat misinformation and change labor practices – increasing the breadth of journalistic fact-checking – there are still concerns. The discourse in the articles balances between including technology and protecting the journalists’ authority. Thus, the discourse is not exclusionary in either direction – pro-AFC or against it.
The article “A Case of Claims and Facts: Automated Fact-Checking the Future of Journalism’s Authority” by Patrick R. Johnson is in Digital Journalism. (open access).
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