The Weird governance of fact-checking and the politics of content moderation

Dados Bibliográficos

ID6443548
AutoresOtávio Vinhas (0000-0002-0226-4371, University College Dublin, autor correspondente), M Bastos (0000-0003-0480-1078, University College Dublin)
Ano2023
Volume27
Fascículo5
Páginas2768-2787
Data de publicação2023-11-29
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoNew Media & Society (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1461-4448 • E-ISSN: 1461-7315
EditoraSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/14614448231213942
OpenAlexW4389203095
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas15
Referências citadas46

In this article, we chart the conflicting standards of fact-checking outside Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) countries that shifted their focus from holding politicians to account to acting as content moderators. We apply reflexive thematic analysis to a set of interviews with 37 fact-checking experts from 35 organizations in 27 countries to catalog the pressures they face and their struggle with tasks that are increasingly different from the journalistic values underpinning the practice. We find that fact-checkers have to balance the number of checks across each side of the partisan divide, an exercise in “bothsidesism” to manage the expectations of partisan social media users; that they increasingly prioritize the checking of viral content; and that Meta’s third-party fact-checking program prevents them from holding local politicians to account. We conclude with a discussion of our findings and recommendations for content moderation outside WEIRD countries

Agency (philosophy · Business · Content (measure theory · Corporate governance · Face (sociological concept · Moderation · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Reflexivity · Set (abstract data type · Social science · Sociology · Underpinning · Computer Science · Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection · Law · Misinformation and Its Impacts · Psychology · Social Media and Politics · Social Psychology