Why has fact-checking spread so quickly within U.S. political journalism? In the first field experiment conducted among reporters, we varied journalist exposure to messages that highlight either audience demand for fact-checking or the prestige it enjoys within the profession. Our results indicate that messages promoting the high status and journalistic values of fact-checking increased the prevalence of fact-checking coverage, while messages about audience demand were somewhat less successful. These findings suggest that political fact-checking is driven primarily by professional motives within journalism, a finding that helps us understand the process by which the practice spreads within the press as well as the factors that influence the behavior of journalists.

This article presents a detailed ethnographic account of objective practice among professional fact checkers, reporters who specialize in assessing the truth of political claims. Some critics argue that political debate is inherently value‐laden and defies objective fact checking; I offer an alternative view highlighting the practical epistemology revealed in the newswork routines and discourse of working fact checkers. Drawing links between core concepts in the sociology of science and journalism studies, this analysis highlights how in moments of institutional unsettlement, verification relies on factual coherence, rather than straightforward correspondence. To develop this argument, I anatomize a fact check produced as a participant observer with a major national fact‐checking organization.

Fact-checking has a traditional meaning in journalism that relates to internal procedures for verifying facts prior to publication, as well as a newer sense denoting stories that publicly evaluate the truth of statements from politicians, journalists, or other public figures. Internal fact-checking first emerged as a distinct role in U.S. newsmagazines in the 1920s and 1930s, decades in which the objectivity norm became established among American journalists. While newspapers have not typically employed dedicated fact-checkers, the term also refers more broadly to verification routines and the professional concern with factual accuracy. Both scholars and journalists have been concerned with a decline of internal fact-checking resources and routines in the face of accelerated publishing cycles and the economic crisis faced by news organizations in many parts of the world. External fact-checking consists of publishing an evidence-based analysis of the accuracy of a political claim, news report, or other public text. Organizations specializing in such “political” fact-checking have been established in scores of countries around the world since the first sites appeared in the United States in the early 2000s. These outlets may be based in established news organizations but also “good government” groups, universities, and other areas of civil society; practitioners generally share the broad goals of helping people become better informed and promoting fact-based public discourse. A burgeoning area of research has tried to measure the effectiveness of various kinds of external fact-checking interventions in countering misinformation and promoting accurate beliefs. This literature generally finds that fact-checking can be effective in experimental settings, though the influence of corrections is limited by the familiar mechanisms of motivated reasoning.

While fact-checking has grown dramatically in the last decade, little is known about the effectiveness of different formats in correcting false beliefs or overcoming partisan resistance to new information. This paper addresses that gap by employing theories from communication and psychology to compare two prevailing approaches: An online experiment examined how the use of visual "truth scales" interacts with partisanship to shape the effectiveness of corrections. We find that truth scales make fact-checks more effective in some conditions. Contrary to theoretical predictions and the fears of some journalists, their use does not increase partisan backlash against the correction or the organization that produced it. Keywords:Fact-checking; journalism; political communication; media effects 3 Correcting Political and Consumer Misperceptions: The Effectiveness and Effects of Rating Scale versus Contextual Correction FormatsWhile misinformation -about policies, politics, and even consumer goods -has always been a part of the media landscape, the last decade has seen the emergence of dedicated factchecking organizations aimed at correcting these inaccuracies (Amazeen, 2012;Graves, 2016;Kessler, 2014). These fact-checking organizations vary in organizational structure, research methods, and story presentation; one of the biggest divides concerns the use of ratings systems to that person processes it, and ultimately how successful it is in correcting misinformation. This paper presents the results of an experimental study designed to assess how including a rating scale shapes the effectiveness of a correction and whether this effect varies depending on the type of misinformation (political vs. non-political) and the party affiliation of the reader. We also examine how the inclusion of a rating scale affects readers' attitudes toward public figures and the media. Overall, we find strong evidence that truth scales can be effective tools in countering misinformation and offer few drawbacks. In a non-political context, the addition of a truth scale increases the effectiveness of a correction. In a political context, while the truth scale does not 4 significantly increase the correction's effectiveness, it also does not have the "backfire effect" that theories of motivated reasoning might predict. Even when a correction runs counter to a person's partisanship, the inclusion of a truth scale does not increase the likelihood that the reader will reject the correction or negatively evaluate the outlet that published it.

The last five years have seen a global surge in political fact-checking, reporting that specializes in debunking political misinformation. A growing occupational movement, originating in the United States but increasingly international in scope, has sought to legitimize fact-checking as unbiased journalism, to establish common standards and practices, and to secure reliable funding for this emerging genre. As a genuinely transnational professional movement which includes practitioners from multiple journalistic cultures as well as other fields, fact-checking offers a new site to consider whether and how professional journalism is meaningfully becoming globalized. This paper models a novel approach to mapping a diverse organizational landscape in terms of institutional ties to the fields of journalism, academia, and politics. Drawing on fieldwork from two international gatherings of fact-checkers, I array fact-checking outlets on a ternary graph and review their competing understandings of the mission, the target, and the practices of fact-checking. I highlight areas of convergence as well as divergence in this organizational milieu, focusing particular attention on boundaries not drawn-the willingness of professional journalists in this global movement to share jurisdictional authority with non-journalists. I conclude with suggestions for a comparative research agenda focused on this emergent area of practice.Journalism Studies, 2016 http://dx.