Fact-Checking in the Digital Journalistic Ecosystem: Practices, Possibilities and Legitimation

Abstract

This article surveys how fact-checking platforms make themselves legitimate as trustworthy institutions in contemporary journalism. The objective is to understand their contributions and challenges in the digital ecosystem, in which new actors, technologies and informative demands arise. As academic references, we work with the studies of Graves and Cherubini (2013) and Stencel (2017) about fact-checking’s evolution and analyze the fact-checkers’ guiding principles listed by The International Fact-checking Network (2016). The analysis presented on this paper is focused on Brazilian fact-checking projects Aos Fatos, Lupa and Truco no Congresso. We observe their organization and work methods and examine how they classify checked information, relating them to the Charaudeau’s research (2013) about proof’s production and truth value. We argue that fact-checking has become more significant in the media’s global coverage of political and administrate events due to its efforts to provide readers relevant and reliable information.