[1] Research suggests that fact-checking can indeed correct perceptions among citizens,[2] as well as discourage politicians from spreading false or misleading claims.
[8] Key elements were the establishment of Associated Press in the 1850s (short factual material needed), Ralph Pulitzer of the New York World (his Bureau of Accuracy and Fair Play, 1912), Henry Luce and Time magazine (original working title: Facts), and the famous fact-checking department of The New Yorker.
[citation needed] Ante hoc fact-checking aims to identify errors so that the text can be corrected before dissemination, or perhaps rejected.
Several organizations are devoted to post hoc fact-checking: examples include FactCheck.org and PolitiFact in the US, and Full Fact in the UK.
External post hoc fact-checking organizations first arose in the US in the early 2000s,[1] and the concept grew in relevance and spread to various other countries during the 2010s.
[1] In the 2010s, particularly following the 2016 election of Donald Trump as US President, fact-checking gained a rise in popularity and spread to multiple countries mostly in Europe and Latin America.
[9] One 2016 study finds that fact-checkers PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, and The Washington Post's Fact Checker overwhelmingly agree on their evaluations of claims.
[13] Studies of post hoc fact-checking have made clear that such efforts often result in changes in the behavior, in general, of both the speaker (making them more careful in their pronouncements) and of the listener or reader (making them more discerning with regard to the factual accuracy of content); observations include the propensities of audiences to be completely unpersuaded by corrections to errors regarding the most divisive subjects, or the tendency to be more greatly persuaded by corrections of negative reporting (e.g., "attack ads"), and to see minds changed only when the individual in error was someone reasonably like-minded to begin with.
[15] A 2020 study by Paris School of Economics and Sciences Po economists found that falsehoods by Marine Le Pen during the 2017 French presidential election campaign (i) successfully persuaded voters, (ii) lost their persuasiveness when fact-checked, and (iii) did not reduce voters' political support for Le Pen when her claims were fact-checked.
[33][34] Scholars have debated whether fact-checking could lead to a "backfire effect" whereby correcting false information may make partisan individuals cling more strongly to their views.
Rabbi Moshe Benovitz, has observed that: "modern students use their wireless worlds to augment skepticism and to reject dogma."
The term fake news became popularized with the 2016 United States presidential election, causing concern among some that online media platforms were especially susceptible to disseminating disinformation and misinformation.
[46] The language, specifically, is typically more inflammatory in fake news than real articles, in part because the purpose is to confuse and generate clicks.
On top of that, researchers have determined that visual-based cues also play a factor in categorizing an article, specifically some features can be designed to assess if a picture was legitimate and provides us more clarity on the news.
[48] Further, multiple scientific articles have been published urging the field further to find automatic ways in which fake news can be filtered out of social media timelines.
Lateral reading, or getting a brief overview of a topic from lots of sources instead of digging deeply into one, is a popular method professional fact-checkers use to quickly get a better sense of the truth of a particular claim.
[74] The researchers found that social media sites, Facebook in particular, to be powerful platforms to spread certain fake news to targeted groups to appeal to their sentiments during the 2016 presidential race.
Additionally, researchers from Stanford, NYU, and NBER found evidence to show how engagement with fake news on Facebook and Twitter was high throughout 2016.
[76][77][78] In 2018, researchers at MIT's CSAIL created and tested a machine learning algorithm to identify false information by looking for common patterns, words, and symbols that typically appear in fake news.
[82] Trust in the default or, in decentralized designs, user-selected providers of assessments[82] (and their reliability) as well as the large quantities of posts and articles are two of the problems such approaches may face.
[90] One reason is that it can be interpreted as an argument from authority, leading to resistance and hardening beliefs, "because identity and cultural positions cannot be disproved.
[93][5][6] Criticism has included that fact-checking organizations in themselves are biased or that it is impossible to apply absolute terms such as "true" or "false" to inherently debatable claims.
[100] In 2021, Facebook reversed its ban on posts speculating the COVID-19 disease originated from Chinese labs,[101][102] following developments in the investigations into the origin of COVID-19, including claims by the Biden administration, and a letter by eighteen scientists in the journal Science, saying a new investigation is needed because 'theories of accidental release from a lab and zoonotic spillover both remain viable.
"[103][104] The policy led to an article by The New York Post that suggested a lab leak would be plausible to be initially labeled as "false information" on the platform.
In an article published by the medical journal The BMJ, journalist Laurie Clarke said "The contentious nature of these decisions is partly down to how social media platforms define the slippery concepts of misinformation versus disinformation.
Clarke further argued that "The binary idea that scientific assertions are either correct or incorrect has fed into the divisiveness that has characterised the pandemic.
While interviewing Andrew Hart in 2019 about political fact-checking in the United States, Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson discuss what they perceive as an unspoken conservative bias framed as neutrality in certain fact-checks, citing argument from authority, "hyper-literal ... scolding [of] people on the left who criticized the assumptions of American imperialism", rebuttals that may not be factual themselves, issues of general media bias, and "the near ubiquitous refusal to identify patterns, trends, and ... intent in politicians' ... false statements".
[109] Social media platforms – Facebook in particular – have been accused by journalists and academics of undermining fact-checkers by providing them with little assistance;[98][110] including "propagandist-linked organizations"[98] such as CheckYourFact as partners;[98][111] promoting outlets that have shared false information such as Breitbart and The Daily Caller on Facebook's newsfeed;[98][112] and removing a fact-check about a false anti-abortion claim after receiving pressure from Republican senators.
[98][113] In 2022 and 2023, many social media platforms such as Meta, YouTube and Twitter have significantly reduced resources in Trust and safety, including fact-checking.
[98] Fact-checking journalists have been harassed online and offline, ranging from hate mail and death threats to police intimidation and lawfare.