Fact-checking platforms in Spanish. Features, organisation and method

Abstract

Fact-checking has become one of the most relevant activities of recent years, as a result of the increase in the flow of fake news and of the ease to spread news through platforms such as social media. The goal of the research is to assess the task of fact-checking developed by initiatives that use Spanish as a vehicle for comparing inaccurate and false information. We carried out a case study of 19 international projects that use Spanish as the main language to materialise their factchecking actions and the analysis of contents published aims at understanding where these companies develop their activities, how are them internally organized and which methods they use to translate the data obtained to the audience. Results show that most of fact-checking projects in Spanish-launched most of them in the period 2014-2016remain active. In South America, these organizations have more weight. Most of them have a journalistic nature, although there is a large number of civic and independent projects. Among strategies for verification, text is the preferred formula, although some innovative methods to present the degree of accuracy of assessed contents have been found.

Spanish Fact-Checking Services: An Approach to Their Business Models

“…Fact-checking services have been grouped in the case of Spain into three categories, in accordance with the typology proposed by Graves [52]: those promoted by the civil society, those linked to the media, and the autonomous journalistic websites [13]. Other authors have rated these platforms according to company ownership with four tags: "independent", "groups", "media", or "institutions" [53]. In general, active Spanish factchecking services can be classified into two similar groups according to the origin of their resources: financially dependent or independent on the media or financed by civil and voluntary organisations [38].…”

Verification initiatives in the scenario of misinformation. Actants for integrated plans with multi-level strategies

“…The first step was to review a number of texts on false content dissemination, verify them and the measures taken by different organizations to prevent their dissemination. Data from previous research on the main characteristics of information verification organizations was simultaneously used (Vizoso & Vázquez-Herrero, 2019). Such data will help us understand the development and current status of fact-checking practices, especially in Europe.…”

Uso del diseño lúdico para combatir la desinformación:

“…En este contexto, los medios de comunicación y las instituciones educativas han lanzado diferentes iniciativas de verificación con el objetivo de crear una conciencia crítica y capacitar a los ciudadanos para evaluar distintos tipos de bulos y falsedades (Vizoso y Vázquez-Herrero, 2019). En algunos casos, el diseño lúdico ha resultado útil para mostrar a los usuarios los procesos de verificación y las estrategias de desinformación de manera divertida, didáctica y participativa (Gómez-García y Carrillo-Vera, 2020; Roozenbeek y Van Der Linden, 2019a).…”