Le soutien de Google et de Facebook au factchecking français

Abstract

FR. Tandis que le fact-checking (vérification par les faits) a bénéficié d’un essor et d’un intérêt certain depuis plus d’une décennie au sein des médias et de l’espace public, les plateformes numériques, pointées du doigt pour leur passivité face à la propagation de fausses informations particulièrement en 2016 à l’occasion des scrutins britannique (Brexit) et américain (élection de Donald Trump), ont entrepris l’année suivante des initiatives de soutien et de partenariat à destination de ces unités journalistiques spécialisées, dans une démarche de fiabilisation de l’information circulant en ligne. Fondé sur un travail d’observation participante et d’analyse approfondie de la littérature institutionnelle et professionnelle dans le domaine, cet article porte à la fois sur les outils et apports techniques de Google et de Facebook au travail de vérification de l’information et sur deux opérations de fact-checking collaboratif initiées par ces géants numériques : d’une part la coalition CrossCheck, ayant réuni trente-trois rédactions françaises durant la campagne présidentielle de 2017 et soutenue financièrement par Google, via l’organisation First Draft ; d’autre part the Facebook’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program, initiative du réseau social consistant à démonter et signaler les rumeurs présentes sur sa propre plateforme en faisant appel à des tierces parties, en l’occurrence les rédactions de fact-checking assermentées, et à les rémunérer pour ce travail. Ce faisant, les auteurs examinent dans quelle mesure ces partenariats spécifiques, affichés par les rédactions auprès de leurs publics dans un esprit de relative transparence et constituant autant des opportunités que des opportunismes, y compris d’un point de vue financier, entrent en résonance avec les relations complexes et ambiguës, déjà connues, entre médias et plateformes, et ont des incidences autant sur les modalités pratiques de travail des fact-checkers que sur la transformation de leur modèle et de leurs choix éditoriaux. *** EN. Fact-checking has been growing and gaining interest within the media field and within public space for more than a decade; meanwhile, digital platforms have been spotted as passive towards the spread of false and fake news, notably in 2016 during the British referendum (Brexit) and the election campaign of Donal Trump in the USA. The following year, they therefore undertook support and partnership initiatives dedicated to these specialised newsrooms, in order to increase the reliability of online news – i.e. of the contents that they themselves distribute. This article is based on participant observation and on in-depth analysis of the institutional and professional literature in the field. It focuses on the tools and technical contributions of Google and Facebook to news verification, as well as on two collaborative fact checking operations initiated by these digital giants: on the one hand, the CrossCheck alliance which brought together thirty-three French newsrooms during the 2017 presidential campaign and was financially supported by Google, via the organization First Draft; on the other hand, the Facebook’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program which hires and pays assigned and labelled fact-checking newsrooms to debunk and tag the news on the social network, in order to dismantle rumours on its own platform. In so doing, the authors examine to what extent such a dependency echoes the complex and ambiguous relationships between platforms and media which have deeply been studied elsewhere: in particular, they discuss why these specific partnerships, including funding, are both opportunities and opportunisms, how they impact the working practices of fact-checkers and how they tend to transform their model and their editorial choices, despite their relative transparency towards the audience. *** PT. A checagem de fatos vem crescendo e despertando interesse no campo da mídia e no espaço público há mais de uma década. Enquanto isso, as plataformas digitais têm sido vistas como passivas à disseminação de notícias falsas, principalmente em 2016 durante o referendo britânico (Brexit) e a campanha eleitoral de Donal Trump nos EUA. No ano seguinte, foram empreendidas iniciativas de apoio e parceria dedicadas a essas redações especializadas, a fim de aumentar a confiabilidade das notícias on-line – ou seja, do conteúdo que elas mesmas distribuem. Este artigo baseia-se na observação participante e na análise aprofundada da literatura institucional e profissional no campo. Ele se concentra nas ferramentas e nas contribuições técnicas do Google e do Facebook para a verificação de notícias, bem como em duas operações colaborativas de verificação de fatos iniciadas por esses gigantes digitais: por um lado, a aliança CrossCheck, que reuniu 33 redações francesas durante a campanha presidencial de 2017 e foi apoiada financeiramente pelo Google, por meio da organização First Draft; por outro, o Programa de Verificação de Fatos de Terceiros do Facebook, que contrata e paga agências de checagem de fatos para desmascarar e marcar as notícias na rede social, a fim de desmantelar rumores em sua própria plataforma. Ao fazer isso, os autores examinam até que ponto essa dependência ecoa as relações complexas e ambíguas entre plataformas e mídia que foram profundamente estudadas em outros lugares: em particular, discutem por que essas parcerias específicas, incluindo financiamento, são tanto oportunidades quanto oportunismos, como elas impactam as práticas de trabalho dos verificadores de fatos e como elas tendem a transformar seu modelo e suas escolhas editoriais, apesar de sua relativa transparência em relação ao público. ***

Fostering Artificial Intelligence to Face Misinformation: Discourses and Practices of Automated Fact-Checking in Brazil

“…Partnerships between platform companies and tech developers mainly support that thriving surge of automated fact-checking. Confirming previous research demonstrating that Silicon Valley corporations are the primary funders of fact-checking activities (Graves & Anderson, 2020;Graves & Lauer, 2020;Nicey & Bigot, 2020) and critical backers of AI technologies (Simon, 2022), every product launched by fact-checkers received funds from at least one of the major players in the tech industry (i.e., Meta, Google, and Microsoft).…”

“…Big tech has become an important news media sponsor through several grants and programs (Nechushtai, 2017;Nieborg & Poell, 2018), directly shaping the industry from production to distribution (Russell, 2019). This trend can also be noticed in automation (Simon, 2022) and fact-checking (Graves & Anderson, 2020;Nicey & Bigot, 2020).…”

“…There is evidence that this journalistic subgenre has undergone remarkable institutionalization (Graves, 2022;Singer, 2020). The launch of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) by Pointer Institute in 2015 (Graves, 2018a), the normative role of its code of principles (Nicey & Bigot, 2020), and the Global Fact annual meetings (Graves & Lauer, 2020) are indicative of this process.…”

“…Scholarly work on fact-checking has also considered these concerns (Graves & Anderson, 2020;Johnson, 2023;Nicey & Bigot, 2020). Recent research has shown that practitioners worldwide have been privileging debunking over political factchecking due to the growth of partnerships established with Meta and Google (Graves & Lauer, 2020).…”

“…Recent research has shown that practitioners worldwide have been privileging debunking over political factchecking due to the growth of partnerships established with Meta and Google (Graves & Lauer, 2020). In particular, Meta's Third-Party Fact-Checking Program, introduced in 2017, consists of a fixed contract between IFCN signatories and Meta to check claims signaled on Facebook by social media users and algorithmic detection (Lelo, 2022a;Nicey & Bigot, 2020). Publishers who participate in that program have the autonomy to select which of those messages they want to correct.…”