Communicating fact to combat fake: Analysis of fact-checking websites

TY - GEN

T1 - Communicating fact to combat fake

T2 - 2019 International Conference on Information Technology and Computer Communications, ITCC 2019

AU - Pal, Anjan

AU - Loke, Cliff

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2019 Association for Computing Machinery.

PY - 2019/8/16

Y1 - 2019/8/16

N2 - Online falsehood has now become a pressing problem. One way to tackle it lies in investigating the veracity of dubious claims and disseminating the facts to the online community. Several fact-checking websites (e.g., Snopes.com, FactCheck.org) are now serving the purpose of communicating facts by determining the veracity of fake news. However, the scholarly understanding of fact-checking websites is currently limited. To plug this research gap, the objective of this paper is to identify the features of fact-checking websites. For this purpose, it reviews the literature to identify possible dimensions of information work, namely, Acquisition, Disclosure, Verification, Presentation, Interaction, and Diffusion that could be associated with fact-checking websites. After that, it analyzes 22 fact-checking websites to figure out features that help manifest each dimension of information work. The relevant features are identified and discussed. The paper contributes towards developing a framework of the fact-checking websites. The findings have practical implications in terms of design strategies for such websites.

AB - Online falsehood has now become a pressing problem. One way to tackle it lies in investigating the veracity of dubious claims and disseminating the facts to the online community. Several fact-checking websites (e.g., Snopes.com, FactCheck.org) are now serving the purpose of communicating facts by determining the veracity of fake news. However, the scholarly understanding of fact-checking websites is currently limited. To plug this research gap, the objective of this paper is to identify the features of fact-checking websites. For this purpose, it reviews the literature to identify possible dimensions of information work, namely, Acquisition, Disclosure, Verification, Presentation, Interaction, and Diffusion that could be associated with fact-checking websites. After that, it analyzes 22 fact-checking websites to figure out features that help manifest each dimension of information work. The relevant features are identified and discussed. The paper contributes towards developing a framework of the fact-checking websites. The findings have practical implications in terms of design strategies for such websites.

KW - Fact-checking

KW - Fact-checking websites

KW - Fake news

KW - Interface design

KW - Online falsehood

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85074375977&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1145/3355402.3355415

DO - 10.1145/3355402.3355415

M3 - Conference contribution

AN - SCOPUS:85074375977

T3 - ACM International Conference Proceeding Series

SP - 66

EP - 73

BT - 2019 International Conference on Information Technology and Computer Communications, ITCC 2019

PB - ACM

Y2 - 16 August 2019 through 18 August 2019

ER -