Innovating fact-Innovating fact-checkingchecking

Alexios Mantzarlis (@Mantzarlis)Managing Editor

Pagella Politica / FactCheckEU

POINT Conference 4.0Sarajevo

22 May 2015

Crowd-checkingCrowd-checking

Contaminating Contaminating reporters & readersreporters & readers

FactCheckEU:FactCheckEU:crowd-checking as a crowd-checking as a

missionmission

Complexity of EU projectComplexity

of EU projectDemocratic

DeficitDemocratic

DeficitLack of EU-wide mediaLack of EU-wide media

How it works: How it works: the interactionthe interaction

How it works: How it works: three tiers of usersthree tiers of users

How it works: How it works: the gratificationthe gratification

- Users create profiles with brief bios and all their work on the site

- Other users vote factchecks; these votes and the amount of accepted factchecks result in a user rating

But does it But does it actually actually work?work?

500 users signed up, many active at least once

Real community of translators

With easy factchecks process usually rapid and effective

«Regulars» become better with practice

×Quality of factchecks was often low

×Most users’ commitment flagged relatively soon

×Level of interaction between users was disappointing

×Readers still anchored to national narrative of EU affairs

Strengths & Strengths & WeaknessesWeaknesses

Possible solution: break down fact-checking into simpler tasks (finding data, creating graph, editing the

draft)

Crowd-checkingCrowd-checking

Contaminating Contaminating reporters & readersreporters & readers

Structuring our sourcesStructuring our sources

TrovaDato: TrovaDato: Help readers do their own fact-checkingHelp readers do their own fact-checking

Keyword search yields links saved with those keywords, sorted by

frequency of link

Country 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017Austria 0,27 1,009 1,748 2,487 3,226Belgium 0,196 0,981 1,766 2,551 3,336Bulgaria 0,862 1,4 1,938 2,476 3,014

Croatia-

0,913-

0,819-

0,725-

0,631 -0,537

Cyprus-

5,411-

3,221-

1,031 1,159 3,349Czech Republic

-0,934 2,489 5,912 9,335

12,758

Denmark 0,417 1,54 2,663 3,786 4,909Estonia 1,63 1,226 0,822 0,418 0,014

Finland-

1,206-

0,187 0,832 1,851 2,87France 0,285 0,371 0,457 0,543 0,629Germany 0,533 1,393 2,253 3,113 3,973

Greece-

3,855 0,601 5,057 9,51313,96

9

www.imf.weo/asdasjdlskja?!ȣA

Crescita Pil (FMI Weo Ott 2014)Allow user to select and highlight data s/he wants to export/graph

User can choose among a wide variety of graphs to plot the

selected data, then download / export

TrovaDato: TrovaDato: Fast facts for reportersFast facts for reporters

Why innovate?Why innovate?

1. Too much misinformation to fight = need to enlist more people

– Spread the fact-checking bug to readers– Support/promote high-quality journalism

2. Find new revenue streams