Fact-Checking Institutions, Practices, Publics, Algorithms and Artificial Intelligence

INTRODUCTION

Research into Fact-checking: Introducing the State of the Art in the Field
Oscar Westlund

PART I: FACT-CHECKING INSTITUTIONS

Original Section Editors: Valérie Bélair-Gagnon, Lucas Graves, Bente Kalsnes, Steen Steensen, and Oscar Westlund

1. Considering Interinstitutional Visibilities in Combating Misinformation
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon, Lucas Graves, Bente Kalsnes, Steen Steensen, and Oscar Westlund

2. Digital Infrastructures of COVID-19 Misinformation: A New Conceptual and Analytical Perspective on Fact-Checking
Ida Anthonj Nissen, Jessica Gabriele Walter, Marina Charquero-Ballester and Anja Bechmann

3. Facing Fakes: Understanding Tech Platforms’ Responses to Online Falsehoods
Cai Hui Lien, James Lee, and Edson C. Tandoc Jr.

4. The Watchdog Role of Fact-Checkers in Different Media Systems
Paulo Ferracioli, Andressa Butture Kniess, and Francisco Paulo Jamil Marques

5. Debunking False Information: Investigating Journalists’ Fact-Checking Skills
Marju Himma-Kadakasa and Indrek Ojamets

PART II: FACT-CHECKING PRACTICES

Original Section Editors:  Oscar Westlund, Jan Lauren Boyles, Lei Guo, Kristy Hess, Magdalena Saldaña, and Edson C. Tandoc Jr.

6. From Public Reason to Public Health: Professional Implications of the “Debunking Turn” in the Global Fact-Checking Field
Lucas Graves, Valérie Bélair-Gagnon, and Rebekah Larsen

7. The Logics of Fact-Checking Website Operations
Bumsoo Kima and Nicholas R. Buzzelli

8. Epistemology of Fact Checking: An Examination of Practices and Beliefs of Fact Checkers Around the World
Michael Koliska and Jessica Roberts

9. Show Me the Facts: Newsroom-Affiliated and Independent Fact-Checkers’ Transparency Acts
Seth Seet and Edson C. Tandoc Jr.

10. Cutting through the Hype: Understanding the Implications of Deepfakes for the Fact-Checking Actor-Network
Teresa Weikmann and Sophie Lecheler

PART III: FACT-CHECKING AND THE PUBLIC

Original Section Editors: Oscar Westlund, Jan Lauren Boyles, Lei Guo, Kristy Hess, Magdalena Saldaña, and Edson C. Tandoc Jr.

11. The Corrective Effect of Fact-Checking and Hostile Media Perceptions: A Three-Way Interaction Model between Social Media News Usage and Political Misperceptions
Han Lin, Janggeun Lee, Yi Wang, and Yonghwan Kim

12. Divides in News Verification: Antecedents and Political Outcomes of News Verification by Age
Rebecca Ping Yu

13. Factbait: Emotionality of Fact-Checking Tweets and Users’ Engagement during the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election and the COVID-19 Pandemic
Jiyoung Lee and Brian C. Britt

14. The Alternative Truth Kept Hidden From Us: The Effects of Multimodal Disinformation Disseminated by Ordinary Citizens and Alternative Hyper-Partisan Media: Evidence From the US and India
Michael Hameleers, Darian Harff and Desirée Schmuck

PART IV: AUTOMATION AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Original Section Editors: Oscar Westlund, Jan Lauren Boyles, Lei Guo, Kristy Hess, Magdalena Saldaña, and Edson C. Tandoc Jr.

15. Dominant Disciplinary and Thematic Approaches to Automated Fact-Checking: A Scoping Review and Reflection
Lasha Kavtaradze

16. A Case of Claims and Facts: Automated Fact-Checking the Future of Journalism’s Authority
Patrick R. Johnson

17. AI as an Apolitical Referee: Using Alternative Sources to Decrease Partisan Biases in the Processing of Fact-Checking Messages
Myojung Chunga, Won-Ki Moonb and S. Mo Jones-Jang

18. Do You Speak Disinformation? Computational Detection of Deceptive News-Like Content Using Linguistic and Stylistic Features
Noëlle Lebernegg, Jakob-Moritz Eberl, Petro Tolochko and Hajo Boomgaarden

PART V: FORWARD LOOKING PERSPECTIVES

19. Advancing a research agenda amid misinformation: platform companies, professional fact-checkers, and publics
Oscar Westlund, Jan Lauren Boyles, L. Guo, Kristy Hess, and Magdalena Saldaña

Biography

Oscar Westlund (PhD) is a Professor at Oslo Metropolitan University since 2018, where he co-leads the OsloMet Digital Journalism Research Group and has institutionalized its OsloMet DJRG fellowship that has attracted more than 30 fellows from all over the world. Westlund is the Editor-in-Chief of Digital Journalism (since 2018), an internationally leading journal in communication for which he has introduced several new article formats. He has authored and edited multiple books, as well as 100+ articles, chapters and reports. His award-winning research focuses on journalism, social media, mobile media, misinformation, fact-checking as well as media- and information literacy. Westlund has worked at several renowned universities in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. He was a visiting scholar RISJ at University of Oxford in 2011, and acts as the Sweden representative for the annual RISJ Digital News Report project. Westlund and his colleagues have been awarded and carried out research projects granted by national research councils in Norway, Sweden, Spain and Singapore. Westlund has worked as a research leader at the Government Offices of Sweden and served several EU inquiries. In 2026 he is a visiting professor at the Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology (PJAIT) and a faculty associate at the Public Tech Media Lab at University of Wisconsin. Westlund continues to serve as chair of the advisory board for the Nordic Observatory for Digital Media and Information Disorder (NORDIS) since 2021. NORDIS is an independent non-partisan multidisciplinary hub for the EU Digital Media Observatory.