Reality check for fact-checkers
Two developments this week as we launch this newsletter on disinformation and on ways to blunt its effect on discourse and our daily lives, one from the biggest social media network and another from some of the users who populate it.
Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg said Wednesday that the social network will stop recommending politics-themed groups and will reduce political content on user news feeds.
The move, made in response to violent and misleading messages on the platform that helped build up to the January 6 storming of the US Capitol in an attempt to keep then US President Donald Trump in the White House, may become global policy for Facebook.
"[O]ne of the top pieces of feedback that we are hearing from our community right now is that people don't want politics and fighting to take over their experience on our services," AFP quotes him as saying in an earnings call.
Closer to home, hundreds of TV host Willie Revillame's fans camped overnight outside Wil Tower in Quezon City to greet him on his birthday, in the hope, ABS-CBN's Jervis Manahan reports, of getting cash and prizes promised in unverified posts on Facebook.
It is yet unclear how Facebook's decision will affect legitimate political parties and groups— or legitimate campaigns that use social media to somehow level the playing field when mainstream media pays them little attention—but the effect on Revillame's disappointed fans is more obvious and immediate.
Despite fact checking services and fact checking articles being around since at least 2017, there have been attempts to put fingers to plug holes in a dike against the flood of false information.
The real question
"Who checks the fact-checkers?" has been a recurring, almost reflective, retort since media outfits started doing fact checks on suspicious posts on social media, but maybe the real question should have been "who checks them out?"
Research from the College of Computer Studies at Mindanao State University - Iligan Institute of Technology suggests not a lot of people do.
According to "Examining Online Fact-Checking Programs: Perspective of Social Media Users from Mindanao," a paper presented at an online conference in December 2020, 62% of 685 respondents were aware of fact-checking services by Rappler and VERA Files but less than half of them used media fact checks.
Part of that is ease of use, with respondents saying it is quicker to use Google to verify information in a doubtful social media post "because information found in social media may not be found in the fact-checking site," researchers led by Dr. Rabby Lavilles write.
This is more because fact checkers are outnumbered by social media posts than because of problems with the fact-check sites, which 79% of respondents said are easy to use. For posts that have fact checks, Lavilles suggests fact check services can comment links to those in the actual viral posts to give users quicker access to them.
The team also suggests using more videos to present fact checks as well as venturing into TikTok, which has boomed during the quarantine as a "venue for sharing short information" (as well as, and unfortunately, videos of politicians dancing).
Fact-checkers may also have to contend with a potentially bigger problem also faced by media in general. The team asked about perceived trust and found that:
"For Rappler, 40% take a neutral stance on the fact-checking service while 27% has trust and 33% choose 'not trusted.' VERA Files got 61% on the neutral and 25% on trust and 14% distrust."
They said participants in the survey and in related FGDs were of the opinion that fact-checkers are "one-sided or favor one political party," a view also shared by and expressed by the Philippine government, which is often the subject of those checks.
Aside from media's role as a check on government, agencies like the Presidential Communications Operations Office and officials like the president's spokesman have been documented making claims that are either false or lacked necessary context, so it isn't exactly a victim here.
VERA FILES FACT CHECK: To boost trust in Sinovac, Roque repeatedly cites wrong data | FALSE: 'UP professor' supports UP-DND accord termination
Unrelated to content, but linked to disinformation that favors the government, a company network taken off Facebook in 2019 for inauthentic behavior also happened to be "the company behind Trending News Portal, the top website shared by former Presidential Communications Operations Office Assistant Secretary Mocha Uson," Rappler reported at the time.
In September 2020, and for similar behavior, Facebook took down a network that posted "content supportive of President Rodrigo Duterte and Sarah Duterte’s potential run in the 2022 Presidential election; criticism of Rappler... ; issues relevant to the overseas Filipino workers; and praise and some criticism of China."
MORE ON FAKE NETWORKS: Cat-and-mouse game: Twinmark fake network still thrives on Facebook
Lavilles et al offer some caveats. Among them, that trust for fact-checkers may be lower because the study was conducted in Mindanao. "Social media users in Mindanao tend to favor the programs of government because of its support to the president, coming from Mindanao," the team writes.
They are also careful to point out that survey data is not meant to reflect the views of the entire island group of Mindanao. "Although the sample may not represent the broader population, the perception of the users does not necessarily negate the result of the survey."
Notably, trust for fact checks by CNN Philippines—a network not perceived to be adversarial to government—is at a nice 69%.
One recommendation made in the study was for social media platforms to "identify authorized government or organizational accounts that will verify or validate the posts" and to build a reputation for being unbiased.
This could be done by fact-checking more posts that favor the political opposition or make false claims about government policies and projects.
Dr. Jonathan Corpus Ong — a scholar who has taken among the deepest of dives into disinformation networks in Southeast Asia — points out that many disinformation producers are driven not by ideology but by money.
Buzzfeed News reported in 2019 that "opposition candidates who once lambasted the president and his legions of digital disinformation agents have adopted some of the same tactics."
"The Philippines offers a cautionary tale for other countries for what happens when disinformation production within the PR industry has become so financially lucrative that they have moved from shady black market transactions to the professional respectability of the corporate boardroom," Ong said in a January 2020 piece by Buzzfeed News. He said these firms should be held as accountable as the online trolls they employ.
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Hello! If you have made it this far, welcome to the #FightDisinfo newsletter, where we'll take a weekly look at the disinformation landscape and the ways we can make the internet a safer place for discourse and discernment.
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I am exactly not sure if I read a single article, or a compendium of several. I would much prefer that each item, no matter how short, be provided a hook and a link (e.g., "read more"). I also would much prefer if related stories are placed below rather than interspersed between the main text. Otherwise, congratulations and hoping for more stories from this site.