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Este estudo propõe a abordagem da verificação de factos como processo da prática jornalística (fact-checking) e como género discursivo (fact-check) partilhado por diferentes campos da comunicação, do jornalismo à comunicação estratégica. A pandemia de COVID-19 reforçou a necessidade de destrinçar entre informação falsa e informação fidedigna. Analisam-se 205 fact-checks sobre vacinas do Polígrafo, recolhidos da página de Facebook desta agência de fact-checking. Conclui-se que i) 79,5% das publicações analisadas partem de informações divulgadas nas redes sociais online; ii) 82% da informação verificada é falsa ou contém algum tipo de imprecisão; iii) os casos verificados como verdadeiros são, na sua maioria, informação que se pretende veicular esclarecer dúvidas sobre a vacinação; iv) a maior parte das verificações são feitas a partir de fontes oficiais (31,1%), seguindo-se as fontes especializadas (21,6%); v) os fact-checks podem ser entendidos como um cibergénero jornalístico, também apropriado pela comunicação estratégica.

O artigo identifica como características do comportamento autoritário sistematizadas por Levitsky e Ziblatt (2018) se revelam em declarações do presidente do Brasil, Jair Bolsonaro, verificadas pelo site de fact-checking Aos Fatos. A partir de uma análise de conteúdo, seguida de análise de sentidos das declarações de Bolsonaro no Twitter sobre a pandemia de Covid-19, o estudo permite tensionar autoritarismo e desinformação no discurso do presidente em meio à crise sanitária, bem como os desafios que isso representa para o fact-checking, o exercício do jornalismo e a democracia no contexto brasileiro

Countering misinformation can reduce belief in the moment, but corrective messages quickly fade from memory. We tested whether the longer-term impact of fact-checks depends on when people receive them. In two experiments (total N = 2,683), participants read true and false headlines taken from social media. In the treatment conditions, “true” and “false” tags appeared before, during, or after participants read each headline. Participants in a control condition received no information about veracity. One week later, participants in all conditions rated the same headlines’ accuracy. Providing fact-checks after headlines (debunking) improved subsequent truth discernment more than providing the same information during (labeling) or before (prebunking) exposure. This finding informs the cognitive science of belief revision and has practical implications for social media platform designers.

This thematic issue explores the global fact-checking field, focusing on its organizations, practices, and institutional dynamics. Over the past decade, fact-checking has expanded to over 400 organizations, with approximately half operating in the Global South. Fact-checkers have built a solid institutional framework featuring annual conferences, regulatory bodies, and partnerships with big techs and public organizations. Even with this cohesion, the fact-checking movement remains deeply heterogeneous. Organizations range from small local outlets to global media giants, operating within varied media and political systems. These differences shape how fact-checkers define their mission and approach misinformation, and offer a valuable lens for journalism and political communication studies to analyze evolving media systems and digitalization effects worldwide. Given such diversity, our issue addresses the need for research to observe regional and comparative perspectives on fact-checking alongside studies of broader global trends. Recent scholarship has focused on how fact-checkers adapt to diverse environments, particularly in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and how the field is evolving. It also examines fact-checkers’ relationships with platform companies, policymakers, and transnational institutions combating misinformation. Contributions employing diverse methodologies, from case studies to large-scale content analyses, are included, with a particular emphasis on understanding organizational and contextual specificities in this crucial area of media and political communication.

This study investigates the methods and practices used by self-identified fact-checkers situated on the fringe of the field of fact-checking to support their agenda for public recognition and legitimacy. Using a case study approach and selecting nine cases across five countries (Russia, Brazil, India, China, and Singapore), we identify the most common distinguishable attributes and tactics associated with this ambiguous collection of actors. In addition to identifying how fringe fact-checkers weaponize fact-checking practices and exploit or mimic the social standing of accredited fact-checkers, we critique examples where state-supported fact-checkers associated with authoritarian governance structures fact-check for national interests. We propose a spectrum of fact-checkers including those where public or general interest fact-checkers follow journalistic ideals and align with accredited communities of practice or non-accredited peer recognition, and a collection of fringe fact-checkers ranging from “special interest” actors promoting specific political agendas to hostile actors with disruptive, destructive, and openly propagandistic interests and aims to destabilize the global public sphere. The article contributes to current research and debates about the institutionalization of fact-checking and the understudied area of fact-checking impersonation, a problematic activity associated with misinformation and propaganda on platforms and the internet.

The battle against disinformation played a key role during the Brazilian presidential elections of 2022. Supporters of Jair Bolsonaro—and, to a much lesser extent, of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva—generated and disseminated deceptive and false “informative content” to influence public opinion. To counter the spread of fake news, different initiatives emerged. Based on a multimodal and hybrid ethnography, this essay discusses different modes of resistance to what we call “alternative images.” This term refers to intentionally misleading images with a deceptive referential value that are presented as accounts or reliable metaphors of reality. We describe three modes of countering these misleading images visually: public demonstrations, artistic interventions, and fact-checking agencies. Each one has its own modes of visual assessment and political intervention. The article argues for the importance of carrying out ethnographies of disinformation, capable of contributing to actual efforts against disinformation and alternative facts, along the lines of public and engaged critical anthropology.

What can be done to combat political misinformation? One prominent intervention involves attaching warnings to headlines of news stories that have been disputed by third-party fact-checkers. Here we demonstrate a hitherto unappreciated potential consequence of such a warning: an implied truth effect , whereby false headlines that fail to get tagged are considered validated and thus are seen as more accurate. With a formal model, we demonstrate that Bayesian belief updating can lead to such an implied truth effect. In Study 1 ( n = 5,271 MTurkers), we find that although warnings do lead to a modest reduction in perceived accuracy of false headlines relative to a control condition (particularly for politically concordant headlines), we also observed the hypothesized implied truth effect: the presence of warnings caused untagged headlines to be seen as more accurate than in the control. In Study 2 ( n = 1,568 MTurkers), we find the same effects in the context of decisions about which headlines to consider sharing on social media. We also find that attaching verifications to some true headlines—which removes the ambiguity about whether untagged headlines have not been checked or have been verified—eliminates, and in fact slightly reverses, the implied truth effect. Together these results contest theories of motivated reasoning while identifying a potential challenge for the policy of using warning tags to fight misinformation—a challenge that is particularly concerning given that it is much easier to produce misinformation than it is to debunk it. This paper was accepted by Elke Weber, judgment and decision making.

Previous research indicated that corrective information can sometimes provoke a so-called “backfire effect” in which respondents more strongly endorsed a misperception about a controversial political or scientific issue when their beliefs or predispositions were challenged. I show how subsequent research and media coverage seized on this finding, distorting its generality and exaggerating its role relative to other factors in explaining the durability of political misperceptions. To the contrary, an emerging research consensus finds that corrective information is typically at least somewhat effective at increasing belief accuracy when received by respondents. However, the research that I review suggests that the accuracy-increasing effects of corrective information like fact checks often do not last or accumulate; instead, they frequently seem to decay or be overwhelmed by cues from elites and the media promoting more congenial but less accurate claims. As a result, misperceptions typically persist in public opinion for years after they have been debunked. Given these realities, the primary challenge for scientific communication is not to prevent backfire effects but instead, to understand how to target corrective information better and to make it more effective. Ultimately, however, the best approach is to disrupt the formation of linkages between group identities and false claims and to reduce the flow of cues reinforcing those claims from elites and the media. Doing so will require a shift from a strategy focused on providing information to the public to one that considers the roles of intermediaries in forming and maintaining belief systems.

The spread of misinformation is a global phenomenon, with implications for elections, state-sanctioned violence, and health outcomes. Yet, even though scholars have investigated the capacity of fact-checking to reduce belief in misinformation, little evidence exists on the global effectiveness of this approach. We describe fact-checking experiments conducted simultaneously in Argentina, Nigeria, South Africa, and the United Kingdom, in which we studied whether fact-checking can durably reduce belief in misinformation. In total, we evaluated 22 fact-checks, including two that were tested in all four countries. Fact-checking reduced belief in misinformation, with most effects still apparent more than 2 wk later. A meta-analytic procedure indicates that fact-checks reduced belief in misinformation by at least 0.59 points on a 5-point scale. Exposure to misinformation, however, only increased false beliefs by less than 0.07 points on the same scale. Across continents, fact-checks reduce belief in misinformation, often durably so.

As a remedy against fake news on social media, we examine the effectiveness of three different mechanisms for source ratings that can be applied to articles when they are initially published: expert rating (where expert reviewers fact-check articles, which are aggregated to provide a source rating), user article rating (where users rate articles, which are aggregated to provide a source rating), and user source rating (where users rate the sources themselves). We conducted two experiments and found that source ratings influenced social media users' beliefs in the articles and that the rating mechanisms behind the ratings mattered. Low ratings, which would mark the usual culprits in spreading fake news, had stronger effects than did high ratings. When the ratings were low, users paid more attention to the rating mechanism, and, overall, expert ratings and user article ratings had stronger effects than did user source ratings. We also noticed a second-order effect, where ratings on some sources led users to be more skeptical of sources without ratings, even with instructions to the contrary. A user's belief in an article, in turn, influenced the extent to which users would engage with the article (e.g., read, like, comment and share). Lastly, we found confirmation bias to be prominent; users were more likely to believe - and spread - articles that aligned with their beliefs. Overall, our results show that source rating is a viable measure against fake news and propose how the rating mechanism should be designed.