An independent experimental fact-checking site, exploring and advocating ways to make fact-checking better.
In recent months we’ve pored over a pair of scholarly works on the topic of fact-checking. One, Checking the Fact-checkers in 2008: Predicting Political Ad Scrutiny and Assessing Consistency by Michele A. Amazeen, we reviewed earlier this year. The second, a doctoral dissertation by former PolitiFact writer Lucas Graves, contains much material we’ll address in one way or another over…
Read more
Fact Checkers are Great Because They Condemned Mitt Romney’s Jeep Ad? In the peer-reviewed article Revisiting the Epistemology of Fact-Checking, researcher Michelle A. Amazeen offers readers an example of the beneficial effects of good fact-checking: When a framework of fact-checking becomes established, it should become more difficult for a politician to fabricate claims. For example, at the end of the…
Read more
In 2014 we first heard of a branch of scholarly research purporting to support the accuracy of mainstream fact checking. The research was mentioned in a paper by political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler, The Effect of Fact-checking on Elites: A field experiment on U.S. state legislators: While individual fact-checks sometimes veer into punditry or semantic disputes (Marx 2012;…
Read more
A critical review of Michelle A. Amazeen’s review of fact checking in 2012 October of 2013 provided us with more than one research paper on fact checking from the New America Foundation. “Making a Difference?: A Critical Assessment of Fact-checking in 2012” [Updated URL, Aug. 23, 2019] by Michelle A. Amazeen proves at the same time less ambitious and more…
Read more