The final speaker in this last Thursday session at the Future of Journalism 2023 conference is Steen Steensen, whose focus is on the impact of political fact-checking during the 2021 parliamentary election in Norway (as part of the Source Criticisms and Mediated Disinformation project, or SCAM). Fact-checking during election campaigns has emerged recently as an important practice, but there is not much impact on the reach and impact of such fact-checks – much of the research to date has focussed on the practices of fact-checkers instead.
Ordinary people are more likely to engage with and share fact-checks that are conclusive (true/false), and they predominantly share fact-checks that agree with their own views, and that enable them to present themselves in a positive light. This study worked with the Norwegian fact-checking organisation Faktisk, which is owned by a number of Norwegian media organisations; it has operated for a number of years, and published 24 election fact-checks in 2021, which it distributed via Facebook (where it is officially accredited). The project captured any references to these fact-checks in the Norwegian media.
Faktisk produces background context articles as well as text and video fact-checks. It tends to focus on the three most influential political parties in Norway, and all fact-checks published in the election rated the statements they checked as incorrect. Reactions, comments, and shares of its fact-check content on Facebook are quite limited (an average of only 158 reactions per post) – but such engagement is very unevenly distributed. Video fact-checks received less interaction than ordinary posts, unusually.
Fact-check shares on Facebook appeared to come mainly from opposing politicians instrumentalising such fact-checks; they are also referenced (mostly) or embedded (less frequently, except for wire services) by Norwegian media covering relevant topics, with each fact-check only receiving only two references or embeds on average, however. Such embedding does provide a wider distribution than Facebook alone, however.
Fact-checks might thus mainly stay within the political sphere, therefore, and are instrumentalised by opposing politicians; perhaps there is thus a need for fact-checked to become more directly engaged in generating audience reach.
