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The fact-checking community

Slowing growth of fact-checking to fight disinformation

Disinformation and other forms of misleading statements are global online problems. Fighting this, the number of fact-checkers around the world doubled over the past six years, with nearly 400 teams of journalists and researchers in 105 countries. But the growth in the international fact-checking community has slowed down over the passed several years.

Duke Reporters’ Lab annual fact-checking census counted 391 fact-checking projects that were active in 2021. Of those, 378 are operating now.

”That’s up from a revised count of 186 active sites in 2016 — the year when the Brexit vote and the US presidential election elevated global concerns about the spread of inaccurate information and rumours, especially in digital media. Misleading posts about ethnic conflicts, wars, the climate and the pandemic only amplified those worries in the years since”, according to a blog post by Mark Stencel, co-director, Erica Ryan, project manager and Joel Luther, associate in research at the Lab.

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Fact-checking journalism is available in at least 69 languages on six continents, the report says.

“The largest growth was in 2019, when 77 new fact-checking sites and organizations made their debut. Based on our updated counts since then, the number was 58 in 2020 and 22 last year.”

“These numbers may be a worrisome trend, or they could mean that the growth of the past several years has saturated the market — or paused in the wake of the pandemic. But we also expect our numbers for last year to eventually increase as we continue to identify other fact-checkers, as happens every year.”

The report shows that more than a third of the growth since 2019 came from existing fact-checking operations that added new outlets to expand their reach to new places and different audiences.

“That includes Agence France-Presse, the French international news service, which launched at least 17 new sites in that period. In Africa, Dubawa and PesaCheck opened nine new bureaus, while Asia’s Boom and Fact Crescendo opened five. In addition, Delfi and Pagella Politica in Europe and PolitiFact in North America each launched a new satellite, too.”

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Fact-checking has expanded quickly over the years in Latin America, but less so of late. Since 2019 we saw three launches in South America (one of which has folded) plus one more focused on Cuba.

Many fact-checking sites publish their findings in multiple languages, either on the same site or in some cases alternate sites. English is the most common, used on at least 166 sites, followed by Spanish (55), French (36), Arabic (14), Portuguese (13), Korean (13), German (12) and Hindi (11).

”Nearly two-thirds of the fact-checkers are affiliated with media organizations (226 out of 378, or about 60%). But there are other affiliations and business models too, including 24 with academic ties and 45 that are part of a larger nonprofit or non-governmental organization. Some of these fact-checkers have overlapping arrangements with multiple organizations. More than a fifth of the community (86 out of 378) operate independently.”

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