Wednesday’s IFCN Talk highlighted the work of the Duke Reporters’ Lab’s automated fact-checking project, Squash, but as director Bill Adair noted, it’s far from the only fact-checking project using automation to fight falsehoods.
Argentine fact-checking network Chequeado launched its automated fact-checking bot Chequeabot in 2018, which uses scans of transcripts from media organizations to help identify claims for fact-checkers. A 2019 Poynter article found that roughly one of five fact checks written by Chequado started from a claim detected by its chatbot.
British fact-checking organization Full Fact, which has collaborated with Chequado on a number of automated fact-checking projects, has been researching this technology since 2015. In addition to detection, Full Fact has used automation to keep track of how many times a false claim has been repeated, and help fact-checkers respond to claims in real time. In 2019, a collaboration between Full Fact, Chequeado and Africa Check was recognized by Google’s AI Impact challenge out of a field of 2,600 applicants.
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Source: Fact-checkers use automation to maximize their impact | Poynter