Stopping Fake News: The work practices of peer-to-peer counter propaganda

When faced with a state-sponsored fake news campaign propagated over social
media, in a process we dub “peer-to-peer propaganda,” a group of volunteer
Ukrainian journalistic activists turned fact checking into a counter-propaganda
weapon. We document the history of StopFake, describe its work practices, and
situate them within the literatures on fact checking and online news practices. Our
study of its work practices shows that StopFake employs the online media
monitoring characteristic of modern journalism, but rather than imitating new
stories it applies media literacy techniques to screen out fake news and inhibit its
spread. StopFake evaluates news stories for signs of falsified evidence, such as
manipulated or misrepresented images and quotes, whereas traditional fact
checking sites evaluate nuanced political claims but assume the accuracy of
reporting. Drawing on work from science studies, we argue that attention of this
kind to social processes demonstrates that scholars can acknowledge that narratives
are socially constructed without having to treat all narratives as interchangeable.