The rise of (online) political fact-checking

Is that true?

A fact checker is the person who checks factual assertions in non-fictional text (…) to determine their veracity and correctness.

(from Wikipedia)

Fact checking and fact-checkers

The “common sense approach”

Every man has a right to be wrong in his opinions, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts

(Bernard Mannes Baruch)

The politicians approach

"Why spoil a good story with the truth?”

(Politician, any)

http://mediapolicy.newamerica.net/sites/newamerica.net/files/policydocs/The_Rise_of_Political_Fact-checking.pdf.pdf

Some people say it all began with this man...

Rapes, immigration and propaganda

The real data

Why the Internet (may) make a difference

l Real Time checking

l Crowdsourcing

l Open Data

l Gamification

l Semantic analyis of content and automatic fact-checking

http://www.factcheck.org/

Washington Post: the Fact Checker blog

Washington Post: the Fact Checker blog

New online platforms

Truth-O-Meter

Obameter

GOP Pledge-O-Meter

In Italy: Pagella Politica

https://pagellapolitica.it/

In France: Veritomètre

http://itele.owni.fr/

In Uk: Guardian's pledge tracker

In Egypt:

Poll: 3092 votes of Internet usersbetween 1/9/2012and6/10/2012

Crowdsourcing the quest for truth

Ahref Foundation (Italy)

https://factchecking.civiclinks.it/it/

http://africacheck.org/

Real Time Fact-Checking

, 2012 U.S. Presidential Debate

Italian Elections

Fact-Checking and partecipation

Source: http://www.misurarelacomunicazione.it/2013/01/15/il-fact-checking-restituisce-dignita-al-dibattito-politico-unanalisi-su-lospoglio-e-skyfactcheck/

Semantic automatic truth-telling

WashPo – Truth Teller

http://truthteller.washingtonpost.com

Fact Checkers are biased?

Figures must be contextualized

Politicians quoting less data

Problems

More for the tech-savvy

•Thanks!

Oxford, 27th of February 2013